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Normally I resist the flow and post next to nothing about Christmas on any journals I have at the moment, or chats. But this year brought two interesting surprises.

I arrived home after a three hour drive, just in time to have missed everyone as they went off to church (yes, intentionally missed it), so I caught up on reading the christmas cards my parents had received, complete with family yearly news letters. About 30 minutes later, everyone arrived home, but before anyone could even say hello to me, my step-uncle's wife's mother passed out on the doorstep of the front door. Thankfully two men were behind her and already in position to help her over the step, so they were able to quickly catch her and bring her inside. My aunt (whose mother just passed out) started crying and running around for a phone, my cousins (sons of that aunt...yes, it's really weird) yelled at each other to get out of the way, and I just stood in the back watching. Thankfully, my mom is a nurse and step-dad a nurse anesthetist, so in any sort of health emergency/issue, I know there are people who know how to do things or administer whatever. At any rate, she came to after a few minutes, first-response firemen and paramedics arrived, and everyone trundled off to the hospital leaving myself, step-dad, mom, and grandmother home to eat dessert. As a post-note, she was ok, but they admitted her for the night to do some tests...still no word on what happened by the time I left for the night. No offense, but old people suck. As a second side-note, it is interesting to see how people react to unexpected emergencies.

Secondly, it has become an expectation that my mom will buy *almost* the thing I wanted. For instance, if I ask for a particular appliance or something, she'll take it upon herself to get me the cheap substitute version. This usually ends up being the one I use, even though I'm not happy with it. It's like you want a blender, get a shitty one, and now have no real excuse or need to get the blender you want, and then create trash out of the shitty blender. I've begun practicing giving out only very unspecific gift ideas or extremely specific ideas.

Well, this year my mom hit all my gifts right on the head (for the first time I can remember). I received a badger hair lathering brush, a wine book complimented with two wine glasses and two bottles of wine (a new interest somewhat inspired by Shalome), a letter opener, Cerutti cologne, and a $400 leather jacket, dark brown (almost black). The jacket would have been the thing I would have liked to pick out, but she happened to get one that works for me perfectly. As a bonus, my mom got into scrapbooks this year, and she gave me two immensly thick (4 inches each) scrapbooks filled with....me. One book is all about my education and schooling, and the other is filled with pictures and mementos of vacations, family, and everything else. It was quite the beautiful gift, to be honest.

All in all, an interesting and actually good Christmas for once for me.