Have a Sparkly New Year
We rolled into the house from NYC late last night. Late enough that all I wanted to do was drag myself up the freezing cold stairs of my drafty old house and crawl under the half dozen quilts and sleeping bags we have heaped on the bed just to survive these cold New England nights.
But instead we opened presents.
Not that the smörgåsbord of last Friday wasn’t enough to fill us all to bursting. As usual my mom went a tad overboard and, (also as usual), I couldn’t fit everything in my car for the ride home. In what is becoming a Christmas tradition, the Widget sat patiently for 6 1/2 hours in the back of our car looking like a blond haired E.T. in the closet of doll, with barely enough room to take a deep breath, never mind shift her weight or stretch her little legs.
So we get home, the cat runs out, we think about chasing the cat around out in the freezing dark, then we close the stupid fuck out in the snow because its too much effort and she’s a pain in the ass, and then we walk into the living room where, look, piled high under Pauly the Christmas Palm Tree, are more stacks of gifts.
Mostly it was a bunch of little stuff that we more or less bought for ourselves, handed to someone else in the family, and said, “Here, wrap this shit up and I’ll look surprised when I open it.”
And that’s the story of how I magically got the perfect pair of All-Star One-Stars for Christmas.
In addition to the metric ton of loot that the Widget hauled back from NYC she found a pair of Barbies under Pauly’s drooping fronds. But not just any Barbies. Edward and Bella Twilight Vampire Barbies. At which point my 9yr old destroyed everything I believe to be true about young girls and women, and gushed over these two embodiments of the worst piece of “Princess” bullshit fiction to rear its uglyand self-loathing head in the last twenty years.
I have to be honest and tell you Interwebs, that I love her a little less for being that excited over non-threatening, “vegetarian” vampires. I wasn’t going to sell her into white slavery when she reached puberty, but I think I may have acted a little hasty when I made that bold and heroic declaration on the day that she was born. We’ll have to see how things turn out.
Oh and BTW . . .
Otherwise our visit to Staten Island was great. Saw a bunch of old friends, has some excellent quality time with the family, and ate my face off at the second annual Wegener Lamb & Ham -nice work Dave! My farts are still making my eyes burn. Woo!
None of us were terribly thrilled to come back home. After four and a half days at mom’s house, sharing a too-small-bad with my wife, it *was* nice to lay my head back on my own pillow though. Even if it was freezing cold, and the wind outside was visibly moving the window curtains inside my bedroom.
Right before I drifted off to sleep there was a small voice calling from the darkness at the end of the hallway. “Daddy?”
“Mwuuhh . . .?”
“Daddy!”
“WHAT!?!”
“Edward Cullin’s butt is shiny too!”
” . . whatever . . .zzzzz.”
