This is the first year I have spent Christmas without my parents, and it'll be the second Christmas morning I'll wake up without my sister. No, nothing sinister or heartbreaking happened to her--she just spent Christmas with her former girlfriend's family one year and came home a few days after to have an after-Christmas get-together with us.
My parents didn't feel like traveling away from their adopted Florida homeland. I didn't feel like going to their Florida home for the third time in three months only to turn around three days later. Julie didn't want to book air travel from Milwaukee when the Midwest has been erupting in snowstorms every few weeks. (She thought correctly on that one--Milwaukee is all snowy and wintry mixy right now, and many people's travel plans have screeched to a halt.)
I'm here in Athens with my beau and my friends. It's chilly, and it's quiet. Mary Beth just called and offered to bring me a delicious plate of food from her family's Christmas dinner. Sounds wonderful, as I've had just a teensy bit of food since my lunch earlier today. I'm going to take my new camera and the handy-dandy portable Scrabble game down to Flicker to visit the bartender boyf til he gets off work at midnight. Maybe we'll see Santa flying through the skies!!
It's certainly a nontraditional Christmas for me. Stranger than the year Julie and I were on a cruise with our parents? P'raps. That was 9 years ago. Or 10!! I'm old.
Guess it's time to bust all out on my own, right, y'all?
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Monday, December 24, 2007
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
I do not exist.
I am standing in a home not recognized by UPS, FedEx, Pizza Hut, Papa John's, or Dominoes.
You see, this evening marked the third or fourth time I've found out from a worldwide, highly reputable delivery service (this description does not include the pizza places mentioned above) that my "delivery address does not exist." It's lots of fun to pay for expedited shipping only to discover that you can't be shipped to due to your own nonexistence.
Granted, my house address is a little misleading. The house itself is in a little community of homes off one street, and the house address bears the name of another teensy street that forms that back border of the small neighborhood. But let's go over a few key points here:
1. The teensy street EXISTS.
2. The teensy street has a NAME.
3. The teensy street has a LEGIBLE ROAD SIGN.
4. It is the year 2007 (soon to be 2008!) and I do reckon there's better technology out there than paper maps and compasses. (No, I'm not besmirching the glory of the compass. But an in-cab cheapo GPS system seems fairly routine these days, and what stops 'em from calling the main office or--dare I say it?--the phone number on the shipping label, my number, for more descriptive directions?)
Now I have to wait a whole extry day for this and this.
And that makes me feel like this:
You see, this evening marked the third or fourth time I've found out from a worldwide, highly reputable delivery service (this description does not include the pizza places mentioned above) that my "delivery address does not exist." It's lots of fun to pay for expedited shipping only to discover that you can't be shipped to due to your own nonexistence.
Granted, my house address is a little misleading. The house itself is in a little community of homes off one street, and the house address bears the name of another teensy street that forms that back border of the small neighborhood. But let's go over a few key points here:
1. The teensy street EXISTS.
2. The teensy street has a NAME.
3. The teensy street has a LEGIBLE ROAD SIGN.
4. It is the year 2007 (soon to be 2008!) and I do reckon there's better technology out there than paper maps and compasses. (No, I'm not besmirching the glory of the compass. But an in-cab cheapo GPS system seems fairly routine these days, and what stops 'em from calling the main office or--dare I say it?--the phone number on the shipping label, my number, for more descriptive directions?)
Now I have to wait a whole extry day for this and this.
And that makes me feel like this:
Friday, December 14, 2007
Ho, ho, ho!
I'm trying to force someone I know and love to get into the Christmas spirit. First I told him that I'd be home in Athens for the holidays, a warm body for him to cuddle by his side [in this 70 degree winter chill], a loving girlfriend to keep close as the holiday doldrums attempt to hit each and every one of us swiftly below the belt.
This news was not taken as excitedly as I'd wished. Hmmff.
Next plan? Get a Christmas tree! Decorate it while Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole make us filled with dreams of sugarplum fairies!
It just so happened that I bought the tree by myself. (See earlier post.) GrinchyBoyf (TM) did seem a bit disappointed when I told him I'd done so ("I thought we were going to do that together!") but expressed zero interest in decorating it with me. You see, the lad just doesn't celebrate Christmas in that cheesy way I do. I get overly excited and overwhelmed with countdowns and lights and icicles (Chris would have me call them by their collective name, "tinsel") and the sheer anticipation. Jim doesn't go for this. Not one ounce of it.
Today I ended up half-forcing him to "want" to help me put the lights on the tree. By the time he said he would and that he "wanted" to help, I rejected his offers. Hours later, we were both in our element: he relaxed before a show by watching the classic Christmas heartwarmer, Letters from Iwo Jima, whilst I decorated the tree in jean shorts in mid-December. Guess we came to a compromise after all.
This news was not taken as excitedly as I'd wished. Hmmff.
Next plan? Get a Christmas tree! Decorate it while Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole make us filled with dreams of sugarplum fairies!
It just so happened that I bought the tree by myself. (See earlier post.) GrinchyBoyf (TM) did seem a bit disappointed when I told him I'd done so ("I thought we were going to do that together!") but expressed zero interest in decorating it with me. You see, the lad just doesn't celebrate Christmas in that cheesy way I do. I get overly excited and overwhelmed with countdowns and lights and icicles (Chris would have me call them by their collective name, "tinsel") and the sheer anticipation. Jim doesn't go for this. Not one ounce of it.
Today I ended up half-forcing him to "want" to help me put the lights on the tree. By the time he said he would and that he "wanted" to help, I rejected his offers. Hours later, we were both in our element: he relaxed before a show by watching the classic Christmas heartwarmer, Letters from Iwo Jima, whilst I decorated the tree in jean shorts in mid-December. Guess we came to a compromise after all.
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