Santa brought me a pony after 25 years of asking for one. He brought 3 of them actually. I got a 3-pack of re-released original My Little Ponies, which are now safely set up on the bookshelf where the ferret can’t steal them. Chaucer got me a copy of Die Hard 2 to go with the original that Eddie had bought a couple of weeks ago, and I got The Pillars of the Earth from Pickle. Eddie got me some toys, the King’s Quest Collection, and a copy of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal (terrifically funny from what I’ve read so far), some Hello Kitty notepaper, and I got a bunch of clothes from other folks.

Everyone liked the snowflakes and angels that I’d crocheted, and breakfast at Dad’s was painless. The animals enjoyed their toys; Pickle has already hidden one of the jingly balls Eddie got her, and Chaucer spent about 5 minutes licking the catnip mouse he was given.

Pickle the Wonderferret says….

Christmas wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. My sister surprised me by deciding that she was completely sick and tired of the whole bullshit between me and Dad, so she called him up, told him she was bringing me over whether he liked the idea or not, and told me we were leaving to go to Dad’s because he was expecting us over there. So I put some clothes on and told Eddie to put shoes on and we went over there for about 45 minutes and had a nice visit and exchanged phone numbers.

I also ended up getting a few new sets of comfy weekend clothes and some jammies, some bigass slippers that look like turtles, a glass paperweight (with a tiny turtle inside), and a new sewing machine (woot! An instruction manual that doesn’t start with “Dear Homemaker!”). Eddie’s parents and Nanny pitched in and bought us a new microwave to replace the one that I’ve had since my days at URI. Eddie got a bunch of Star Wars/M&M M-Pire figures and a Darth Tator and some assorted doo-dads that I can’t remember offhand. We brought Pickle over to Mom’s, and she enjoyed a fun-filled day of playing in the hallway the entire time. Even the fuzzy got a present - 20ft of dryer exhaust tube to climb through. We had it wrapped around the TV, but it wasn’t steady, isn’t sturdy, and it was making an assload of noise so we pulled it out and wrapped it around the coffee table.

Unfortunately, Eddie had to go to work tonight to move all the Christmas shit out of his department. He’ll be back sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Poor guy, he’s been up since about 7am and probably won’t get in until about 4am.

I’ve revised my Christmas list. I’ve given things a lot of thought, and this is simply a list of things that I’d like to have but don’t stand a chance in hell of getting. So here we are, in no particular order:

1. I’d like to make it through at least one year where one of my relatives doesn’t end up in the hospital or get cancer or end up sicker than they already are. (Backstory: We show up at Mom’s this afternoon just in time to see her and Nanny off to the ER because Nanny thinks she’s got another blood clot in her leg. She’s home, 8 hours later, but merry fucking Christmas, eh?)
2. I’d like to have my father back. I could care less if my step-mother thinks I’m an ungrateful little heathen and won’t speak to me, but I’d like my father to at least acknowledge that he has 2 daughters, not one. Every fucking year I buy or make a present for him, even though he refuses to acknowledge my existance. Every year I say “I’m not going to put myself through this anymore,” and every year I do it anyway, because I refuse to lower myself to his level and be like that.
3. I’d like the rest of my family to stop being assholes to each other. Not a year goes by where at least one uncle isn’t talking to the others. You know what? It’s time to grow the fuck up, people. You’re all in your40’s, stop acting like 3rd graders ganging up and picking on the retarded kid on the bus. Keep acting like this and you know what’s going to happen? Sooner or later those quasi-jokes about only getting together at weddings and funerals are going to be this unwritten law in the family, and even those gatherings are going to end up where one part of the family sits on one side of the room and talks shit about the other. Oh wait, what am I saying, that already happens. Silly me for thinking that the family that I remember having a giant tree and a huge Christmas Eve gathering could ever be that way now. That sort of behavior is so 1984.
4. I’d like to be able to manage our money better so that next Christmas doesn’t suck as much as this one has. It’s not a matter of having enough money to know that I’m getting something as a gift. It’s a matter of being able to actually make sure that people get presents. I’d like a year to go by where we’re not scrambling all through December to save enough money so that I can buy another ball of yarn to finish an afghan or have to decide whether or not I want to eat lunch or use that $5 to put towards the sneakers that Eddie wants. As sad and disgusting as it is to think this way, I’m happy that one of my uncles isn’t going to Mom’s tomorrow. Why? Because that’s one less gift that I don’t need to worry about getting or making. And that makes me feel like a complete and total ass.
5. I want to either get a handle on this fucking paranoia/anxiety or get the fuck out of this house, preferably the latter because if we move then I won’t have a paranoia/anxiety problem anymore. Plus, we’ll be closer to Mom’s house and Eddie’s work, and be in a place where I won’t need to worry constantly that Pickle will be spotted in a window.

And that, my fine friends, is what I want for Christmas. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t need to worry about this sort of shit, but since the world pretty much sucks lately, I get to make lists like this.

*sigh*

Merry Christmas, folks. Enjoy your familes, and hopefully they won’t end up like mine.

Ah… sleep is wonderful. I slept until about 10am, which is a great feeling after 3 days this week of getting up at 4am.

On a good note, we got all the shopping done last night. We bought wrapping paper and gift bags and tissue paper and a couple of gifts for people who weren’t getting crafted things. We also bought some small gifts for each other: red hair dye and a pair of Hello Kitty tree ornaments for me and a Tragically Hip CD for Eddie, and The Brothers Grimm DVD for both of us. Don’t ask me where my sudden and unexplainable facination with Hello Kitty has come from lately. I need to finish the afghans today and tomorrow; I’ll probably do a lot of the crochet while I wait for my dye to set. We’re going to Mom’s house tomorrow for dinner and because I need to bake a cake.