Dec. 27th, 2007 04:57 pm
Christmas in brief
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muckefuckOh, and since it'll be a while before I pump out more posts about my holidays (if I ever do), I went to go on record now saying that this was one of the mellowest, nicest Christmasses ever. I think I may try to have a cold every year. Seriously, it was just strong enough to take the fight out of me without making me too weak to enjoy myself. When things would go awry in their fully-predictable fashion, I had no choice but to sigh and move ahead.
As if that weren't enough, everyone was on their best behaviour. My older brother in particular was in remarkably good shape even before you took into account that he'd been working long days up until my arrival and pulling a lot of late nights one after the other. He may have been nodding off yesterday, but then so was I, and at least he never got bizarre. My stepmom complained about my father's behaviour behind the scenes, but at least in public there was none of the acrimonious bickering of years past and one-on-one he was excellent. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the whole trip was riding back to Mom's with him and my older brother and having a rewarding three-way conversation (as opposed to the tired pattern of Kramer trying to interrupt with inappropriate attempts to join the discourse and being irritably shouted at by my father).
The nephews are all kind of cuteness, of course, and the turnaround time between wondering who the hell Mommy is hugging and specifically requesting that "Unca Da" join in their games was the shortest ever. We already know that the BIL is the Hero of All Time for his role in the Christmas Wipe-Out on Delmar; he also very graciously included me in his game nights with his good friends. Hopefully Sis felt she got enough quality time; at least I felt like I saw more of her this year than I have during any I haven't stayed at her house.
And Mom. Sis did the right thing by warning me that her house was the worst she's ever seen it, so that by the time I got there and saw it was only slightly more messy than last year, I could sigh with relief. I was too tired to do much cleaning beyond tossing old mail, but my presence alone was enough to motivate her to do a helluva on her own. I even guilted her into wrapping all the presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas morning!
There was just one thing missing, however, though it didn't really hit me until Christmas Day. We were having a pleasant time unwrapping gifts (AWI reads well enough to do the distribution, happily amassing a pile of his own to tear through after we're all finished), but I felt oddly uninvolved. I thought it was just lingering illness until![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj called. After relating what I hoped were a few telling anecdotes about the day's events, I passed the phone to someone else. That's when I felt a sudden pang in my chest and realised for the first time how much I missed having him and e. there to share things with. So I played this little video for Kramer and we all felt better:
As if that weren't enough, everyone was on their best behaviour. My older brother in particular was in remarkably good shape even before you took into account that he'd been working long days up until my arrival and pulling a lot of late nights one after the other. He may have been nodding off yesterday, but then so was I, and at least he never got bizarre. My stepmom complained about my father's behaviour behind the scenes, but at least in public there was none of the acrimonious bickering of years past and one-on-one he was excellent. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the whole trip was riding back to Mom's with him and my older brother and having a rewarding three-way conversation (as opposed to the tired pattern of Kramer trying to interrupt with inappropriate attempts to join the discourse and being irritably shouted at by my father).
The nephews are all kind of cuteness, of course, and the turnaround time between wondering who the hell Mommy is hugging and specifically requesting that "Unca Da" join in their games was the shortest ever. We already know that the BIL is the Hero of All Time for his role in the Christmas Wipe-Out on Delmar; he also very graciously included me in his game nights with his good friends. Hopefully Sis felt she got enough quality time; at least I felt like I saw more of her this year than I have during any I haven't stayed at her house.
And Mom. Sis did the right thing by warning me that her house was the worst she's ever seen it, so that by the time I got there and saw it was only slightly more messy than last year, I could sigh with relief. I was too tired to do much cleaning beyond tossing old mail, but my presence alone was enough to motivate her to do a helluva on her own. I even guilted her into wrapping all the presents on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas morning!
There was just one thing missing, however, though it didn't really hit me until Christmas Day. We were having a pleasant time unwrapping gifts (AWI reads well enough to do the distribution, happily amassing a pile of his own to tear through after we're all finished), but I felt oddly uninvolved. I thought it was just lingering illness until
bunj called. After relating what I hoped were a few telling anecdotes about the day's events, I passed the phone to someone else. That's when I felt a sudden pang in my chest and realised for the first time how much I missed having him and e. there to share things with. So I played this little video for Kramer and we all felt better:![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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