joyfuldemise

Happy Christmas, all!

I think it may just have been the perfect Christmas.

This year was the year of two Christmases for me: the 24th was Christmas with my favorite people, and the 25th was Christmas with my immediate family. My embarassing secret is that I turn into a hyperactive five-year old at Christmas. I try not to, but there's just no stopping it. I can't begin to list the dumb excuses that were used to put off present-opening just to torture me. If you think I'm exaggerating, you won't when I tell you that the presents were placed in the centre of the room on a ten foot high platform (and then the ladder was put away)! There was also a fairly believable effort to convince me that presents could not be opened until noon, as per tradition. (noon? NOON?!) Of course, we didn't end up opening presents until noon anyway, but somehow I didn't mind the distraction. Plus, homemade biscuits fresh from the oven will buy you anything with me.

Even the day with my family was more fun than usual. I didn't think I could watch Mickey's Christmas Carol again, so I borrowed The Lion in Winter. Definitely one of my better ideas. We made a huge pot of mulled cider and added waaaay too much rum, which made for a really entertaining Christmas Eve. This year marked the first time that it's been just us for Christmas (my immediate family and my grandfather); usually we have a whole hoard of people over. I like the big, crazy dinners with old hippies that my parents organize, but the small group meant that we could be more experimental in the kitchen. We tried cooking a goose, which will not be repeated but was fun to try. Still, the gravy was pretty freakin' awesome and it was lovely to get a chance to play around with spicing & such. My parents can never figure out why things taste different when they let me season the food. Someday, I'll tell them that everything just gets boozified.

I got some fantastically cool stuff
(clothing I'd tried on months ago, loved and then walked away from because I couldn't afford it-my friends went back and got it for me. , a rockin' ski bag; a photo album full of pictures from the roadtrip I took with Janet)
some sweet and lovely stuff
(a handmade stocking from my mother that was an exact replica of the original one that she made 21 years ago that somehow got lost when Rob and I split up. I remember where it was, so I'm pretty sure he either still has it or has tossed it)
and some just plain funny stuff
(rainbow striped 80's leg warmers that I had to be shown how to wear, mood rings, argyle tights with skulls)

and I gave some pretty cool stuff too:
-a pewter rockabilly iPod case/belt buckle
-pin-up style art done in stencil-graffiti style on pages of vintage mystery novels (not done by me-I can only wish I could do that!)
-a self-adhesive commie beard (this was just the cheap, funny little thing to go with the money I gave my brother, but it was a WAAAAY bigger hit than the cash)

Now's the time to start making New Years' resolutions, I suppose, but I have a tendancy to drive myself and everyone I know crazy with my efforts for self-improvement, so I think I might just skip that this year. Alternately, I'll just come up with some fun resolutions to give me ideas.