Yes, happy holiday and all to everyone.

Sleepy tired entry, I'm afraid. It's been a long day, and I didn't even do much.

Yeah. So, my mother. (edited upon noticing this makes NO sense at all. Meant that it's my mom that makes all the below compulsory.)

Boy and I went to the folks' house last night for Ye Olde Christmas Tortes (two, my mother is Italian, she can't do any food small) and keeping company with my little sister and her flamboyantly gay Theater Folk friends. Flamboyantly gay in and of itself is no problem. Unfortunately this one came with Extreme Volume. His laugh alone could have shattered glass. At one point my sister and he (my sister is highly prone to burst into song anyway) broke into Ave Maria. I'm utterly surprised that no glass objects tore themselves to pieces.

It's kind of cute when my little sister bursts into song, and it's also a little like hanging out with the Von Trapp family (complete with accents, she's big on accents), but I do not need the Human Eyebrow and his hometown pal on whom he is clearly crushing doing so. Actually hometown pal was very quiet.

Oh, and my mother's friend Jackie, also Theater Folk (she teaches acting) so there were all these constant play references etc flying around. Which is okay but honestly I hope to only ever have to see plays my sister is in for the rest of my life.

Like movies, plays of course (especially in manhattan) are hit or miss. The problem is that if a play misses, it's ten times as awful because then you have to feel for all the poor actors who are likely working side jobs as buspersons and making almost nothing off the play.

But it's okay. And generally I like Jackie. She's one of very few of my mother's friends that I don't feel it's a huge chore putting up with.

And then this fucking morning, as usual, we have to drag our asses out of bed at the crack of ass to schlep them BACK to the folks' house (after 8 whole hours since leaving) in order to Open The Presents at the Proper Moment.

The Boy was trying super deluxe hard to convince me to call in asleep to the event, but I wasn't having any of it. If I have to suffer for the sake of my parents, so does he, dammit. And honestly I was staring really, really hard at the alarm clock this morning in an attempt to a., calculate exactly how many mintues more I could sleep, and, b., whether there was any plausible excuse to escape. No dice on either.

I suppose it's kind of cute and all, but goddamn if I'm not past the age where I actually care about what shit I get, especially at eight a.m.

And I am assuming the presents flew okay (yes I did get them). In my family the true test of the Present is whether or not it comes out and gets tried on or fooled with or whatever pretty much immmediately. By which signal it seems that the many shirt/sweatery things I got my sister (hey, it's what she asked for) and the DVD player for my dad went well. The DVD player is already nesting under the teevee, and my sister tried each article on, and exclaimed "cute" at each.

My father is *impossible* to buy stuff for. He doesn't really read, and he doesn't have any hobbies, really, and my mom buys his clothes.

But my streak with him is holding okay for now. The one miss of recent years was the hundreds of dollars of Lego Mindstorms that Boy wound up with. But he did want to play with them, just that my mom wouldn't have let him leave his toys on the floor. We have had major coups with the french press coffee maker, the digital video camera (although to date he has yet to actually attach the damn thing to a computer, he just keeps watching everything through the tiny screen), and the DVD player this year.

My mom is easy because she always tells me exactly what she wants. My sister is typically also fairly easy because I grok her aesthetic.

Getting...very...sleepy.

And shopping was far less hellish than I had anticipated. Don't know whether that's good or bad, economy and lower manhattan and all, but nevertheless, it made my life a helluva lot easier.

And, tomorrow we leave on what promises to be quite a New Year's trip.

Me and Boy and Sister and Dog and Tiny Marsupial are all driving down to Florida to hang out with the family on Uncle's place for a few days.

Now, this doesn't necessarily mean I won't be updating, and I haven't had a multi-entry run for a bit so you shouldn't miss me too much. But I think I should have at least dialup access so I think I'll manage once a day or so.

And hopefully the 20-hour drive won't be TOO bad. The cats are all staying, they're easy, just leave pots of food. Dog and Tiny Marsupial are going to be the tricky part, especially since Marsupial will have probably at least one whole night in the car. Poor little guy.

So...hm. Still not feeling overly christmassy, but I never really do. Most of it feels sort of obligatory to me. But whatever. I do like giving people presents.

If I have time tomorrow before leaving, I'll update then. Not sure yet, there's a lot of stuff to take care of. But I will try. And much love and hugs and holiday thingies to everyone.

- onehanded