happy holidays

Blake has been gone for 7 hours and I've already started binging on the computer. Ahhh. If only my modem wasn't a piece of crap and if only I could wrap up this silly Homestar fan pattern I wrote this fall. The pattern is all written, but. I'm spacey from sitting in the basement for most of the afternoon and my hands are cold. Still, I'm very happy that I get to mellow out this much today; it's been a long string of late nights and early mornings. Today is for knitting, writing, and sorting through Christmas pictures.

Yeah, it was a good Christmas. Every year gets better. On Christmas Eve Blake sang with the children's choir at church, the choir I somehow found myself directing this October. Blake has been practicing with this group for the better part of two years, but he has never made it to performing. I don't really mind. He wants to sing with the kids; he doesn't want to be in front of everyone with them, and that's much better than the reverse. And this year he's been singing with them. On Christmas Eve he scored a hat-trick: he stayed in one place, he kept his fingers out of his nose and I could hear him singing. A mother could not be more proud.

I made the genius decision to bathe him before church, so all we had to do when we got home was change into pj's, set out the cookies we'd baked for Santa, and go to sleep. Good thing we made 20 cookies; between Santa and my brother they were all gone by Christmas morning.

korknisse guards the few remaining cookies

This year Blake got a fish and some books and a foam sword and a shirt with a rocket on the front. I got a knitterly necklace and a book on regency sewing and the first Smiths album (on vinyl, my latest drug) and a quarter-year subscription to a yarn of the month club. Mason got old books and new books and a luxurious knit neckwarmer and a shirt with an evil cupcake. Someday soon he'll get another custom calendar, full of this year's concert photography.

And all of us got Homestar for Decemberween.

Yesterday we had dinner at my parents, which was very small but very emotional. This is the last big holiday without my grandmother, as she had a stroke on New Year's Day last year and our last memory of her in health was at my house for Christmas dinner. Mason was there with me, which helped. Blake and Nic got into a few scraps, which didn't. And when it was all over we packed up and went to Mason's sister's house to visit after their Christmas dinner (none of us could have eaten anything more if we were paid. We still managed to have cake, though.)

This is where Blake got to run around with his almost-cousins and receive all the noisy, battery-operated toys that I avoid like the plague. My favourite, and his, was a huuuuge Clone Trooper helmet with a very loud voice setting. He took it with him today for the 1 ½ hour car ride to see the Boy's aunt. I'm sure it will also be his father's favourite toy by the end of that ride. Hee.

This year I find myself nostalgic for lost family, dead and separated by feud or distance. This year I miss long-gone parties with my friends in-between family dinners; bread dragons and 3 a.m.'s in the Dance Cave. This year I listen to people talk about how much better Christmas is when you only go to one place, and I just nod politely. What I have gained in tranquility I can never get back in bustle. I love my house, but this is the time when I wish I was around for brunches and drinks and coffee in the city. And that's what Christmas is for too, I think. Nostalgia and melancholy are alright, as long as you don't binge on them. Me, I'm just trying to stay away from the chocolates and I figure that the sadness will take care of itself.

Labels: blake, christmas, church, nostalgia

- 0 comments/hedgehogs -

- Rocketbride's adventure of 12/26/2009 07:45:00 p.m.