Reading: Sons and Lovers

Moving: walked 3 miles

Listening: snowfall

Watching: "Nightmare before Christmas" and "Small Time Crooks"

25 December 2000: Christmas

Knowing how rivetingly interesting dreams are not, I just want to say one little thing about last night's: that if Dora goes off and plays with my sister instead of with me I will be most put out.

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Christmas. If I'd taken two days of vacation I could have slacked from the 22nd to the 1st inclusive. But I didn't. Instead I slacked five days and will work another two then slack four and then be thoroughly back in business.

But we got a lot done.

Except I have no idea what we did Friday. I believe there was grocery shopping. Also we walked chez SPM to get cat instructions. Probably we ate something. And I cleaned somewhat, just on a lark. RDC put another coat on the dining room walls and now you can't see speckles of white through the sage. I painted the heating grates, wrapped the last of RDC's presents (one arrived Friday and the last Saturday), admired the tree, cleaned the last of other people's crap out of the coal room, raked. Christmassy occupations.

And then it was Christmas. We are grown-ups enough that we showered and drank coffee before attacking the presents. There was a big box from Restoration Hardware that we used as a table (<--foreshadowing) for Blake and his breakfast and our coffee mugs and orange juice glasses, and we sat on floor cushions on the living room floor. We sorted the gifts by wrapping paper--ours, really nice (CLH), kountry kitsch (my mother), fat snowmen (my father and notstepmother), and Amazon (his mother).

Thank goodness CLH sent RDC something tall to occupy most of the leg of his stocking, because I definitely slacked stockingwise. Actually I slacked with everyone. The only reason RDC had anything under the tree was his Amazon list, so that his presents required neither imagination nor shopping on my part. Which indicates how unimaginatively I treated my parents.

My mother was able to tell me one thing. That was available online, so she got that. My father told me nothing, so he got the same thing he always gets--books of American Indian history--and my notstepmother got murder mysteries. Also for her, chocolate-covered blueberries. I didn't know if she liked sweets like that, because some people are freaks about chocolate and fruit. But she, a right-thinking woman, properly divides food into the two types: stuff you can put cheese on, and stuff you can put chocolate on. So she liked them.

In my stocking, I found two tubs of Burt's Beeswax lip balm. This is called "lip stuff." Usually, I get some by making a nonverbal beseeching noise while tapping my lips. RDC will toss a tub my way because--have I mentioned this yet? this is a favorite--he has described my lips when at their most chapped as "raw liver rolled in cornflakes." Hmm, tempting. And a box that I thought CLH wanted me think was earrings but which turned out to be toothpicks, standard sororial bait-and-switch. But no, the reason she gave me toothpicks was that they are Lady Dianne toothpicks, I realized when I read the box. Also from CLH, lavender bath oil. From RDC, bootlaces, since the original ones to my boots are nearly through. And fleece mittens and a hat.

RDC had from CLH a bottle of eau de noix, which she bought in Provence (along with my bath oil). I think it's an extract, like vanilla or almond (except this label shows walnuts), which would explain the first ingredient being alcohol, though why it's "alcohol" instead of alcool I don't know. From me, a sticky lint picker-upper since he hates my brush, and eyeglass wipes since he doesn't like to travel with a roll of paper towel and a bottle of Windex, and a Leatherman, a blue Leatherman, because he is Gadget Boy.

My mother's been bragging about how much of a packrat she has stopped being. Her method for getting rid of stuff is to send it to her offspring. She sent me one of our old copies of The Eve of St. Nicholas, which I can nearly recite on my own. She made me a potholder from one of those square handlooms with the teeth--CLH and I used to make potholders every year for our aunts and grandmothers. She must have found a treasure-trove of loops. In purple, yellow, and white, which color combination I do like--blue iris with white daisies, mmm! Both these things cracked me up. She sent me two of the jelly glasses Welch's used a promotion when we were about three feet tall--with a cartoon printed around the sides and a Warner Bros. character imprinted on the bottom of the glass. So now I get to be a packrat for her, except I'm (shh!) not keeping them.

My father gave me Favorite Birds of Florida, which might be a hint to visit, and RDC Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing. RDC lent his copy to DWJ before he read it himself, so that was a great choice (except that my father isn't supposed to know what sex is--sheesh). My notstepmother gave us a Trumpeting Angel figurine, whose lines I really like. Swoopy angles that aren't as Aubrey-Beardsley-esque as I call them.

RDC's mother emptied our Amazon wishlists--Cranium, lots of Jane Smiley, and "Sex and the City" for me; a waffle iron, "Small Time Crooks," and some other DVDs for RDC. So did my sister: "Sense and Sensibility," "To Kill a Mockingbird," and "A Charlie Brown Christmas." Also she taped a k.d. lang concert for me off A&E Live. And an orchid, chenille-y wool sweater from J. Crew for me and a tan one for RDC. And The Bird Garden and Creative Vegetable Gardening and Dry-Land Gardening, except two of those were from RDC, who also gave me The Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword and Handwriting and The Geography behind History and an Arts & Crafts book. And a stunning Christmas ornament modeled after peacock feathers with teal and blue and violet and eyes and irridescence.

Which is a good time for a little side note about my ornaments. Haitch suggested I not do this as my cataloging amuses only me, but indeed, I serve to amuse at least myself.

New in 2000 from RDC	CLH gave me the two mauve and gold ones in 1998.
I love this ornament so much. I picked it up in the Museum store in 1996 when I could ill afford a $20 ornament. But I love it. Love love love it, love its corniness, love its twee-ness, love its astronomical impossibility. Even years are good for ornaments.

Me, I used my husband's wishlist and hoped for the best. Books, music, movies, full stop. And a pancake griddle, as my selfish present. And since I had forgotten the hint RDC gave me months ago, I asked Jenn if she knew about "Got route?" in the "got milk?" style. Except of course it's "got root?" and I remembered the homophone because the former sounds more technical. So he got a t-shirt too. Thanks, Jenn.

My mother's also been enjoying an iota of financial security lately. My sister told me last year that she and BDL exchanged enough presents for a family of kids, and this year she unleashed this new side of herself on us. She asked for a list of ideas and I gave her plenty. Inside the Restoration Hardware box, no longer a table, were a candelabra and a gift certificate. And PLT gave me Upstairs at Eric's.We ended up not going to the zoo. After eating waffles from the new waffle iron, we walked through the lightly falling snow--we had snow instead of an eclipse--to feed the cats, and on the way back decided against the zoo. We had just been three months ago, and it just wouldn't be as much fun without Jessie. We talked to my mother, my father, his mother and Florida family, his Connecticut aunt and uncle, and my sister.

My sister we spoke to only briefly. She had asked us not to call her since she'd be sleeping late, and then we got back from the cats just before 2:00, when "Gone with the Wind" was coming on TCM. So she didn't have much time. Lucky for me, because hopefully by the time we talk again she'll have forgotten how boring I was. I gave her an autographed Blind Assassin and had Margaret Atwood sign my sister's given name instead of her nickname, which Atwood mauled for Alias Grace, an ornament only because it said "1965" on it, an original Grinch plush figurine (I kept Max), a surely-stupid game called "Dirty Minds" that I should have realized would become a drinking game, a dictionary (which she asked for), and a set of those wine trinkets that I think are so fun. Hopefully I'll have an idea before her birthday.

We watched "A Nightmare before Christmas" and RDC made supper and we watched "Small Time Crooks" while eating vanilla frozen yogurt with scads of Nutella. And that was Christmas.