Christmas Present

No, this isn’t a listing of all of the awesome-tastic things I got this year. As I’ve told you about the Christmases of my Past, I thought I’d now tell you about this Christmas.

Christmas hasn’t really been an event since I moved away. Putting up a tree and decorations isn’t that important to me when it’s just me, or just the two of us. My roommate Allie was the driving force behind decorations last year.

My job doesn’t normally give us Christmas Eve off. But this year, since Christmas was on a Saturday, we got the day off (picture me jumping up and down, at the idea of a day off – regardless of the reason). And Earl and I spent the morning doing quite a bit of nothing. The most we did was to venture out to Target and FYE.

Getting into the Target parking lot was a nightmare… because of the back-up at the adjacent Grocery store. People were jockeying for space to get in and get those two or three forgotten items for their Christmas goose. But once we got past those hooligans, it was smooth sailing. Target was quite busy, don’t get me wrong, but we got a parking space right up front, got in, grabbed the wrapping paper I’d been waffling over (pink with penguins!) and the items we put needed to put together a gift basket for the person I drew for his family’s gift exchange (not happening until New Year’s Day). When we got to the registers they all seemed pretty full… but we somehow managed to get to one where the only person in front of us had one stick of wrapping paper. It was serendipitous.

At about four, we packed up the dog, the cheesecake I’d made and the Christmas presents for Earl’s mom and her boyfriend and headed over to their house. Lucy of course headed immediately outside to bark at the ducks through the fence, and Earl and I were bombarded with a plethora of food stuffs.

And when her boyfriend got home from work (He drives a big-rig for Jack in the Box) they left for his family’s Christmas thing, and Earl and I popped in a movie. Do you think that movie was christmasy? Not in the least. We watched “The Mutant Chronicles.” It was enjoyable, I think Earl wants to buy it, simply to say we own it. It’s cast is fairly star filled. Thomas Jayne (aka the first Punisher), Ron Perlman (aka, Hellboy) and John Malkovich (really needs no explination) were the characters who’s names graced the cover of the DVD, but there were other recognizables, including Devon Aoki, Sean Pertwee and Pras.

After that movie, we switch to the TV and watched… a Christmas special? Nope, we watched some Dukes of Hazzard. We’re really into the Christmas spirit.

When they got home, we opened presents. Earl and I got his mom’s boyfriend a CD set of the Amos and Andy Radio Show – he’s really into that sort of thing. And we got his mom the first series of True Blood (her favorite show), I made her a scarf, and we got her Christmas ornaments with her dogs’ and our dog’s faces on them (picture on Wednesday).

They had bought us our entertainment center as a Housewarming/Christmas present, so we weren’t expecting anything more, but they got us Scrabble Flash and Konexi, a word game that is kind of like Scrabble, Jenga and a jigsaw puzzle all in one (picture on Wednesday).

After hanging out and talking some more, we went home with our dog and as it was after midnight, we gave Lucy her Christmas present – a Giant (it’s bigger than her head) Squeaky Duck. She had fun with that for a while we broke out the games and played a round of both.

Christmas Morning we headed out to Tolleson where Earl’s Grandmother has lived for the past 60 or something years and we visited with her and his dad for a while before heading back to Earl’s mom’s house.

She had Mimosas…. There was no keeping me away from that. They made breakfast for the gaggle of people who showed up, two grandmothers, a Cousin, the boyfriend’s daughter, her roommate and daughter and his son… and us.

I filled up on French toast and Mimosas and the Granddaughter opened her mountain of presents (She got a digital camera… who gives a 7 year old a $100+ fragile piece of equipment?) And then most everyone filtered out while Earl’s Mom’s Boyfriend’s mother and I talked in sign language (she’s deaf) and soon it was just five of us.

We went home about noon and spent a while playing the dog before I tackled cleaning out the closet. That’s right. My gift to myself for Christmas was cleaning the walk in. (It may not sound like much to you, but the organized space is heaven compared to what it was from when we moved in until Saturday.)

And then I took down the Christmas tree and put away all of our decorations (all 10 of them).

And that is what Christmas looked like this year.

(Wouldnt it be wonderful if this snow was real?)