Slay-Bells Ring

 I don't even know when I meant to post that, and now it's the 27th and I should PROBABLY change the title to something cheesy like That's a Wrap. I'm always amazed at the people that keep blogging through Christmas, but then I am barely standing by the end of Christmas Eve. 

Our Christmas routine for the past several years has been that my parents (and my sister's family if they're here) come over here on Christmas Eve and I do the food, mostly in appetizer form. Christmas morning we get up and open presents with the kids, then go to my parents' house for breakfast (where my sister's family sleeps if they're here) and exchange more gifts, and then separate for the afternoon, and dinner is here - Matt cooks the turkey, I make biscuits and my mom does sides. This means that most of my work is done by the end of Christmas Eve when I fill the stockings and put the presents out. 

We used to go to my parents' place for dinner but as they've gotten older it makes more sense to pick them up and bring them over here for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and then bring them home and leave all the mess here. Usually my sister and her husband and my niece and nephew are here for Christmas proper or not at all. Last year they had to cancel because of Snowpocalypse 2022, after missing two years because of Covid, and it really really sucked. This year my niece is doing a Masters degree in the UK so they're coming for New Year's for a couple of days so they didn't have to drive as soon as she got home (they live about six hours away). As much as I enjoy a Whirlwind of Family Togetherness followed by some hardcore slothfulness, it will be nice to have a few days of rest followed by a little more celebratory family stuff. Angus got invited to go to a coaching conference in Nashville that he also went to last year, but he'll be here for the first day my sister's fam is, which is nice because they haven't seen him in a while (he was gone back to Ithaca before they came in the summer and they missed him when they missed last Christmas).

On the 23rd Eve and I went to Indigo to get gifts for her friends and .... something else I think, I already forget. Usually I can't bear to go shopping this close to Christmas, but my increased antidepressant dosage and my daughter being home both seemed to give me a boost, and we actually had a really nice time. When we were ready, the line was insanely long, and a manager was walking around warning us that the computers and card systems were very slow because of the increased load. We settled in for a long wait, but the line moved quite quickly, so either the systems recovered quickly or they did a really good job managing expectations. Also, I think the manager walking around talking to people was someone who interviewed at the same time as me when I tried to get hired at Indigo before I got on with the school board AND THEY REJECTED ME. Honestly, Keisha was straight fire at the job and they were right that I wasn't in it for the long haul, so good sense on their part. 

I woke up with a mild head cold Christmas Eve which is a bit of a drag BUT it's not Covid, and also I was mostly done everything I needed to do and got to do all the fun Christmas stuff before getting sick. I felt awful for all the people whose Christmas plans were torpedoed by Covid yet again. 

Christmas Eve was pretty much perfect. I'm always happy to have my parents over, and they love to see the kids, but sometimes the conversational flow is just particularly good. We had a couple of trivia games - one Millenials vs. Boomers and one After Dinner Trivia thing. The first one mostly resulted in a bunch of book questions that only I knew the answer to, and my dad accused the kids of just trying to make me look good. But there was a question about dynamite that prompted my dad to talk about some of his early days mining up north, which resulted in other entertaining stories about my mom's early nursing days, and every time there was a lag one of the kids would throw in another question. It worked really well.

My parents went home pretty early. I usually putter around and wait for the kids to go to bed before I pull out all the presents, but I was lagging. This was the first year I just started stuffing the stockings and putting out presents while everyone was still up (I mean, they're 20 and 23, this was out of habit more than anything). Both kids were still wrapping gifts in various corners of the house, and people would yell "may I approach?" before intruding. 

My mother made giant stockings for the kids when they were babies, so a lot of stuff fits in. When the kids were little, the rules was Eve would get up and go to Angus's room and they would open the stockings together before waking us up. Now no one gets up super early, and I like watching them open the stocking stuff, so we do it all around the tree. 

He's been coaching his old undergrad team so I got him a Coach of the Year ornament

Angus puts on all the clothing he gets as he opens it. This is him putting pants on his arms. 

I gave Eve an ornament with tiny books that she's read. "A tiny Overstory with a tiny Pulitzer Prize label on it!" she squealed. She's not sure she can leave them in the ornament.

Angus was an Eagle with purple team colours in high school AND undergrad, so my friend Sasha (HI SASHA) crocheted him an amazing purple eagle ornament. He was very impressed.

I told Matt I hadn't found anything good for him and he said that was fine, we wouldn't do gifts for each other, and then the sonofabitch bought me a new food processor (the one I have now we got for a wedding present and the buttons don't work, I just have to plug it in to make it go and unplug it to make it stop) and an ice maker, which I almost bought myself during lockdown but didn't because it seemed too self-indulgent (ever since I had the kids I only like water icy cold, and our fridge ice maker stopped working and is too expensive to fix). So I had to say thank-you AND fuck off. 

We usually get up by 8:30 Christmas morning, but I woke up feeling weirdly well-rested and it was TEN and no one was up yet. We made tea and settled in our accustomed places and it was perfect, and then we went to my parents' place for breakfast and then I didn't even need a nap before dinner. 

This is all reading very dully in a "all happy families are happy in the same way". It would be more entertaining if someone had a fight over politics or threw their present across the room. Oh well, I know you all read quickly. I've always been aware of how precarious our joyful family gatherings have been, and since we lost Matt's grandparents and mom and my parents are in their 80s, it all takes on a bittersweet glow. My deep sympathy to people struggling with loss and sadness at this time of year.

Angus got me a 1000-piece puzzle and for the first time wanted to do it with me. It's very funny to watch someone who's never done a puzzle - the rapid alterations between bafflement, rage, and exuberance. 

I am trying very hard not to descend into after-Christmas depression. The snot production and dreary weather are not helping, but the family-movie-watching and reading and puzzling is.