After Christmas

Whew, made it through Christmas! I wish it didn't seem so difficult, but each year we do get through it. I think it always surprises me, as we approach the 24th and 25th, to remember that I am responsible for the celebration -- I do almost all the shopping and cooking and planning and organizing -- and so I cannot sit back and enjoy it. I have to stay busy making it all happen. You'd think I'd remember that, after 13 years! Because it's really only since we had kids that it's been like that. When it was just Rocket Boy and me, we did it together and we just had to make ourselves happy. Most years we went to California to be with my mother, and even though I helped her with dinner preparations and all that, she was still the point person, the responsible one. I truly did not understand how much responsibility falls on the mom until I became the mom.

If you do not like to be the responsible one, you should probably not have kids. But those of us who didn't realize what was involved manage to do the work anyway, more or less. 

It's getting easier, though. Although the twins did not help much, they complained less -- which is a big help. And Rocket Boy helped. I wanted him to fix our poor falling-apart tree with its five missing branches, but he said he couldn't really do it without taking the whole thing apart, so we agreed to have a rather sad tree this year. No straw stars -- the cats love to rip those apart, and since they were destroying so many ornaments already, it seemed better to skip the stars this year. They (I say "they" but I think it was mostly Merlin) destroyed two of my teasel ornaments -- ripped the teasel heads off the cloth bodies and tore them apart. I keep finding little teasel fragments. Bad cats.

Because we didn't fix the tree, the extra Christmas boxes stayed in the living room for people to trip over. Not that that makes any sense. As I type this, I'm thinking -- why don't I just put them on the patio? Maybe I will tomorrow. Right now we're so sick that we're just not coping very well.

Oh yes, illness! Nothing says Christmas like a bad cold, which may of course be Covid, omicron variety, since apparently it cares little for vaccines, even boosters. Teen A got it first, and I thought I was going to resist getting it, but a couple days after Rocket Boy arrived, he came down with it, and so did I. I have a much milder case than he does -- just a little congestion, tiredness, a bit of a headache, a very slightly scratchy throat, some dizziness, all these weird tiny symptoms. But Rocket Boy is truly sick and has been for the last three or four days. He woke up sicker today than he has been any of the other days, so since the Covid testing station at Stazio was open, we drove over there to get our nasal passages swabbed. And got into a terrible long line that we spent two hours in! I've never never never seen it like that. I've never had to wait more than about 30 seconds. Just drive up, they swab you, and you drive off again. This time the line started right after we turned off Valmont onto Butte Mill Road. I googled it, and we were in line for just over one mile, in a circle. A very slow line. Two hours to drive one mile. I was glad we had enough gas (and I had used the restroom right before we left).

Of course, on Christmas Eve I put together two plates of cookies and Rocket Boy delivered them to our next-door neighbors -- and hugged the one to the east who hasn't been vaccinated. She is convinced that she is immune because she thinks she had covid back in January 2020, even though there was no testing available back then and later she tested negative for antibodies, and anyway, having covid once doesn't prevent you from getting it again. Well, we'll see. She had a rather lonely Christmas because most of her relatives refused to visit her on account of her anti-vax attitude. And maybe now she'll get sick! But we probably don't have covid, so she probably will be fine. Her mother lived to be 103 and I think she has the same good genes. We love her even though she has these impossible political beliefs.

Last year we didn't have a main dish for Christmas dinner, so we remedied that this year. We had swordfish for Christmas Eve and a honeybaked ham for Christmas dinner. Despite feeling a little sick, Rocket Boy procured all that on Christmas Eve day (plus a coffee cake, plus rolls), which I appreciated enormously.

I looked back at last year's post-Christmas blog and there was a lot of stuff in it about being a little cross with my family for not getting me anything. I noted that I hoped they would do better this year. Well, they didn't. In addition to all the presents for the twins, I had several presents for Rocket Boy to open: two nice shirts from Lands End, a book called Haunted Warren Air Force Base, a package of lifesavers candy, and a package of wintergreen candy canes. He had nothing for me except two cards, signed by him and the boys, with nothing in them. He had also brought a couple of boxes of candy for everyone to share, which we put under the tree. 

The twins, at the last minute, decided to give some joke presents. They asked me for some boxes -- I came up with a couple of shoeboxes -- and proceeded to wrap up some things they found around the house. For instance, I received a package of toilet paper that I had bought at King Soopers the week before. 

This all sounds kind of bad when I write it down, but it was actually fine -- and funny (the toilet paper). I had ordered myself a couple of things (a Hermione doll and an extra outfit for her) off eBay right before Christmas, and I put both boxes under the tree and opened them when it was my turn to open a gift. The Hermione doll was originally sold as "Wizard Sweets Hermione" back in 2001. I had found "Wizard Sweets Harry Potter" at a Twins Club rummage sale several years ago. I didn't know he was Harry Potter (he was missing his glasses) until I found a picture online. I use him as a little brother to my Barbie dolls. He's smaller than a Stacie but bigger than a Chelsea. Anyway, when I was Christmas shopping at Grandrabbits toystore this year, I noticed that they carried a type of doll called Lottie, and clothes for her. I studied the clothes and decided that they might fit my Harry Potter. So I bought a set of pajamas, and sure enough -- they're slightly small, but they fit pretty well (he's wearing them in the photo, along with his pirate hat from Halloween; it's still Halloween in my Barbie world, for complicated reasons). My brain went click click click and I thought: if I found a cheap Hermione, maybe I could get her some Lottie clothes! And there on eBay was a cheap Hermione (cheap because she's used, no box and her stockings are a little dirty) and I also found a cheap Lottie outfit, a spring dress and sweater (next to her in the photo).

A happy Christmas to me -- and no one but me could have found those things, or known that I wanted them, or anything like that. So I was fine with doing my own shopping!

Now the living room is a dreadful mess. It seems much worse than usual. This is probably mostly because we've been sick, although the tree boxes that should have been put on the patio and the cat tunnel under the coffee table aren't helping either. I haven't had the energy to go around collecting the gift bags and folding up the tissue paper for re-use. Rocket Boy and Teen B just finished the puzzle that you can see on the card table that's sitting on top of the coffee table, but they're missing two pieces which obviously have fallen off into the mess. We're going to look for them later, very very carefully.

I think I had other things to talk about in the blog (such as Kwanzaa, which we haven't started celebrating yet, maybe tomorrow), but it's getting late and Rocket Boy wants me to come watch the rest of a movie we started last night -- On Her Majesty's Secret Service, not exactly a Christmas movie, but it's OK. We have the rest of the week together -- he's scheduled to fly back to St. Louis on New Year's Day -- and I'd like to enjoy all of it together.