half an apple pie down the hatch, and it’s not even bedtime

Merry Christmas, everyone! Or, as a college acquaintance of mine puts it, Merry “"Dominant Culture's Gift of a Day Off to Non-Christians"! My epic project to re-ground myself by Not Leaving the House is going well. Ahh, home sweet home. OK, we did go for a tiny little walk, but nothing big.

One of the highlights of the day was skyping with our brother/in-law and niece, who showed us many of her Christmas presents. I thought it was so much fun I whipped out the camera to show you. (You can just make out Kevin’s head at the very bottom, from my laptop’s webcam.) Lizzie’s eight.

Hey, Lizzie, wanna see what I looked like when I was your age?

Nice pants, right? Be glad you missed the seventies, kid. You would not BELIEVE the clothes we wore then. Those pants are nothing compared to the psychedelic pairs.

After my Dad died, nearly three years ago to the day, I wound up with custody of all my grandparents’ photos of us when we were kids. I spent a while yesterday going through one of the albums, marveling at how little and sweet we all looked. Even my parents – they’re so YOUNG! It’s trippy, being older now than they were in all those pictures.

Some of the highlights of the gift-giving season today:

• a six-gallon shop vac. SO ROMANTIC! This will make the next time the basement floods go a lot more smoothly.
• an enormous toolbox – which only looks like a present to Kevin. It’s really a present to me, because it empties out the junk drawer in the kitchen, giving me more room for…
• cooking implements! I remember in college my friend Tom telling me about how his grandparents had arrived at that level of comfort with life and with each other that all his grandmother wanted for Christmas one year was a rubber spatula. I got me one of those, ayep!
• a cast-iron skillet and griddle – which we immediately put to use making breakfast.
• chocolate in a variety of forms; can’t go wrong there…
• fancy gel pens -  “ideal for lefties!” (because of the quick-drying ink) - so that Kevin can continue to liberate his inner left-handed self.
• and…drum roll please…
• a coupon for “half of a bitchin’ massage table”.

I believe it’s time for the second half of the pie. Good night! Sweet dreams!