It was a good Christmas.  No travel, little stress.  (This is going to be a boring post.)  Going in with little to no expectations proved to be a winning strategy. 

One advantage of the kids being older is that at least some people in the house can sleep in.  I didn't -- I had turkey duty, and it was  not until I was well and truly awake did I realize that we had purchased a twelve-pound turkey instead of our usual twenty-five pounder, and therefore it needed far less time to cook.  I used the time to bake pies instead: pumpkin and the sour cream chocolate pie I wrote about earlier.

The Rocket Scientist and the Not So Little Drummer Boy were up very late, so they slept until 10:30.  It was a far cry from days when all of us would be up by six. (Even today, were we at relatives, we would be up at about 7:00.)  After breakfast of Hobee's coffeecake, we gathered around for presents at a staggeringly late 11:00 am. 

The kids loved what they got, even though in two cases it was an IOU for a gaming system that isn't scheduled to be released for another three months.  There was a lot of laughter.

For me, it was a Christmas for a lot of books:

Prisoner of Trebekistan, by Bob Harris, a gift from a friend earlier in the week. Harris is a very funny, humble guy, and a lovely writer.  My friend had informed me that, having been on Jeopardy! I absolutely had to read this book, and he was right.

The Collected Works of Edgar Allen Poe, from other friends -- a lovely, leather bound volume, that is as tactilely delightful as the stories are disturbing.

Showtime: A History of the Broadway Musical Theatre.  A serious look at a not necessarily serious subject.

Speaking of not necessarily serious subjects: Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality.  I wish I could tell you more about this book, but it was immediately snagged by the teenagers in the house, who are now in the middle of reading it.

Little Bee from my mother.  I don't read much fiction, but this looks lovely.


The Mammoth Reader: Super-size stories and Incredible Information, from my sister-in-law, the Georgia Paramedic, who knows that my mind collects small shiny pieces of information the way that magpies collect tin foil.

And finally, the much-lusted-after Finishing the Hat: Collected Lyrics (1954-1981) with Attendant Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes by Stephen Sondheim.  I love Sondheim.  He is one of the true geniuses in any cultural medium we have today.  I have seen interviews with him, and he also witty, sly, and snarky.  (He tops my list of "five people I would dearly love to have dinner with" along with Alan Rickman, Jane Austen, Terry Pratchett and Mark Twain.)  (Any man who can have a Prince sing about Snow White  "They lie there for years / As we cry on their biers" is my kind of human being.) My one complaint about the book is that it is too short, and does not discuss Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, or Assassins.  Clearly, Sondheim needs to release a second volume, and soon.

I also got a gift certificate, which I have already marked out for The Autobiography of Mark Twain. And not quite a book, but printed material anyway: my kids renewed my subscription to Games magazine.  


My mind will be occupied for quite a while.  I am looking forward to it.

My very favorite gift, though, was a blue canary night light.  Unfortunately none of our light switches have outlets by them, but I plan to put it in as prominent a place as possible, so it can watch over me. It's not quite the only bee in my bonnet, though.

The rest of the day was spent reading -- either in my new books, or my second-favorite Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time, which the Rocket Scientist had discovered while cleaning out next to our bed.  Or eating; Christmas dinner was lower key than it has been in a long time. The food was, as it always is at our holiday meals, quite good.  The only glitch was my failure to make the cranberry sauce the night before so that the flavors had not had a chance to mellow out.

The evening was spent in a heartfelt discussion around the dinner table, followed by a hysterically funny game of Apples to Apples. Echidna Boy won, showing a level of psychological insight into the rest of us that is a little unnerving.

I recognize how blessed I am, not only in material goods, but in the joy and laughter we were able to share with each other.  We generally like each others' company, and I know many people who do not feel that way about their family. My only regret is that I had been feeling too poorly from a cold to attend a Christmas Eve church service.  It is the first time in a very long time that that has been the case.

As I said, a good Christmas.