Christmas is in the Rear View Mirror

I am so glad that it's behind us.

It's not the same as it used to be, you know? Sure, there are always "feelgood moments" here and there, but never the same sort of magical feeling it was when we were young. I find the whole thing very tedious nowadays. When I was young, my favorite part of Christmas was opening my presents. When I got older and had a daughter, my favorite part of Christmas was watching her opening presents--Experiencing the excitement through her eyes. Now my favorite part of Christmas is when it finally ends. I don't mean to be cynical or anything really--I'm just being honest. I really like many parts of Christmas, but I really love for it to be over.

I had a pretty good Christmas this year I guess. I didn't have any emotional meltdowns or anything, and I managed to get everything done. Any shopping excursions I made out into the wilds of Malldom and such went smoothly. No screaming at idiots in their cars or mumbling about surly checkout people in stores. Basically, the traffic (both automobile and human) failed to rile me up or ruin my outings. That's always good.

Sarah stayed overnight on Saturday night, and Teresa dropped her off with some boxes and wrapping stuff as well. We spent the evening watching a movie, and both of us ended up going to bed at about 10:30. When we got up Sunday we went out and did some more shopping, then ended up spending the rest of the afternoon wrapping her mom's presents. We planned on getting the gingerbread house put together too, but that just didn't quite pan out. Oh well, no hurry. We had already determined that if we couldn't get to it we'd still get it done whichever day because it was a "season" thing just as much as it was a Christmas thing. We'll get it done one day this week or weekend I'm sure. It's more of an arts & crafts project really and we both have fun doing it.

I liked having Christmas fall on Tuesday this year. It made the final shopping weekend much less stressful knowing there was still a Monday to pick up any slack. By the time Monday rolled around, all I needed were a few food items. It was good to have Monday off even if it was unpaid. Anyway, after I took care of those little shopping things, I blew the dust off my Harley and fired it up.

It was a great way to spend some time and let off some steam. I hadn't been able to ride in over two weeks due to heavy rain and scheduling, so to finally get out on it was great. Monday was great weather here and just screamed for me to go riding. I didn't go far, but was out about an hour tooling around. I think my favorite moment came when I ran a stretch of road between Auburn and Pacific at 95 mph. It felt good to have to hang on to the bars with a death grip while the wind tried to rip me out of the saddle (remember, I have no windshield on it). It was just what I needed to get the blood pumping correctly.

My Christmas eve was a quiet and somewhat lonely affair. No noise, no visitors, no nothing. It was relaxing and pathetic at the same time. One part of me wanted badly to be out there somewhere, celebrating with friends, but another part of me kept saying, "Stay home and relax... It's an act of desperation to invite yourself to people's houses when they are trying to get their own Christmas in order.

Christmas morning started out with me going over to Teresa & Sarah's house at 7:30. I cracked a bottle of champagne and we all opened presents. Sarah really got a lot of stuff as usual. I was a little surprised when I walked in there and saw how many presents were around the tree. She got a lot of nice stuff--No doubt about it. She liked her new laptop, and I'm sure she was a plenty surprised to get that. She never really does get very excited about stuff though, so it's sometimes hard to tell just how excited she really is. After I ate breakfast we all watched The Santa Clause then Sarah and I went over to my parents house to continue Christmas. I guess you would call that "phase II".

We went a little earlier than I usually do because my sister's family wasn't planning on being there all that long and Sarah wanted to give her cousin Emma her picture that we made. They actually did end up staying a while so we all had a good visit. My dad was fairly tolerable throughout the day and that helped too. About the time my sister's family was getting ready to leave, my brother and his family (Sarah's other cousin Cassady is their only daughter) came over. Shortly thereafter we all ate a pretty good ham dinner. My brother's wife Kim and I were drinking wine pretty much the whole time. We both find it easier to tolerate my dad when we imbibe...

Sarah and I left there at about 5:30 and went over to Kurt & Noelle's house, which is where Teresa was spending her day. I stopped by my house and grabbed my vodka and cranberry juice, and a couple cans of nuts to munch on too. I stayed until about 8:30, during which we all had a pretty good time playing video games and stuff. They have two tv's going with video games, one of which had a dance mat thing on the floor that you have to follow moves onscreen. It's hard to describe, but it was fun. They're great folks. When I crashed at 9:30, I was fairly buzzed, and just like I figured, I was hung over this morning.

Serves me right...