Tag Archives: christmas

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boxing day


Boxing Day… I had to look it up on wikipedia.

Made it through another holiday in once piece… I didn’t feel the itch to write or make images through the whole weekend so kinda feel like I’m standing here empty handed for you.

In one sense I sorta feel like I missed it…

missed…. .. . what?

EXACTLY.

I said “sorta feel”…..

You can miss having a “bad time” if that’s what you’re expecting or have become used to.

Thanks to (I theorize) my new pharmacologically enhanced attention span – I just kept my eyes down and my empathy shields in overdrive through the weekend.

So.. I’m a little mentally fatigued but that’s about it.

Saturday: Our old friend Terry came by the house to visit. He went with me to store with the intention to pick up a couple of gifts for my folks – but they were out of what I wanted. So we wound up crowd watching and buying one of those smoked spiral cut sugary coated spiral cut turkey breast things,… taking it home,… and pigging out.

Saturday Night: That night I went to JJ’s Christmas party… stayed sober and saw ALL sorts of folks I haven’t seen in eons.

Sunday: Went to my dad’s house… made beef roladen… watched a movie… and shot the shit a LOT.

Monday: Went to mom’s… Farmed pleasant conversation with my uncle’s family and old friends of the family… then went to my mom’s doctor friend’s for dinner… Had a lovely conversation with newly transplanted doc and his wife from Boston. (Why are New Englanders so wicked cool?)

Today: I’m enjoying the silence…. Kiwi just stopped by on one of his regular “checking in on monkeyboy” visits. (Sorta how you ask your friends to check in on your cats while you’re on vacation).

Had a cup of coffee and traded stories.

He just left.

I’m going to turn off the phones, turn on some music and clean for a few hours and see where my mood takes me.

I hope everyone on here who wanted to – had a merry christmas. 🙂

I’ll be smearing beer-cheese on my nipples on webcam tonight.

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subterranean christmas party


Yesterday Afternoon , … last night was my dayjob’s corporate christmas party…. As a result… I’m one sore monkey today…

I have one make-up “out day” (read as “vacation”) left for the year… I’ll probably take half of it today once I get through the couple of commitments I have at the office.

Meanwhile I just not got to dump my camera’s memory cards and feel obliged to share them chronologically.

Like the pics I took at BooBoo Steve Brawley‘s party last Sunday.

He had the whole shindig in his basement… Leave it to the master to take a concept as simple as “I’m pissy about my house” and spin it into something fun and playful.

The front door was left open and guests simply “let themselves in”…. Once through the front door – you passed through a drop-dead gorgeously furnished living room to the dining room table where a stack of name badges, cup of magic markers and a simple sign with an arrow pointing to the basement door.

The basement was all done up in colored lights and kitschy cool stuff…

Good mix of folks were there… I’d expect nothing less

Full bar…. nice spread of food….

marginal cheese tray…. colby-jack cubes I think?

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greetings


Mum’s fine… Come to find out it was a GERD condition thrown over the edge by a very bad case of food poisoning she picked up at Mark’s corporate Christmas party. She’s sore – but will be just fine.

Heard from the guys last night… they’ve made it to their respective destinations safe and sound.

Meanwhile holiday cards keep coming in, including the electronic one (above) from dad… which… regardless of if you know my old man or not – will not make much sense… except for maybe the coulrophbia reference… (Chad’s deathly afraid of clowns)…. and here – you *would* have to know pop to understand that by making that the lead image of his greeting means he adores Chad.

I didn’t make the beer cheese last night… but through deft chromosomal donor manipulation – mum should have a batch for me tonight or tomorrow…

*squeee*

Cheese.

THINK

X-MAnifeSto


Just got in from taking the guys to the airport….

You know – contrary to the melodrama of prior years, – I’m not bummed…. not at all now….

(yup… had another one of those “shifts”.)

I sent them on their way and actually felt *good* about it… good that their families will get to see them and how much happiness that will bring them.

I was wishy-washy about last year’s insistence about us staying together for Christmas but didn’t resist too hard because it just didn’t seem worth the fight. Kev had a fire in his belly to drive a point home to his family back in Ohio that we were our own family – and “ours” mattered just as much during the holidays…

But what about “the holidays”?

What kind of make-believe expectations have we placed on ourselves about “the holidays”.

Are we to assume that being under the same roof on one “special” day, (the one we’re all under the rest of the year), makes or breaks the validity of *our* family?

Meaning is where you make it.

It’s also not where you deny it.

I mean.. think of the preferential luxury of it all…

We’re not bound by the traditional “family” structure, kids *or* Christianity.

So why *not* indulge our biological families during a time which, for them, *is* very important?

I’ll wager another large, but unspoken, component behind Kevin’s desire to keep us together during the holiday originates in my sad (yes, at times tragic) moping in the prior years that we’ve split.

Well.. hell.. I’m captain co-dependent… I’d be mopey if they left for a week in the middle of July.

And now, looking at the whole thing from over…. *here* ….. well.. of course I wax sadness over “the holidays”….
duh!!!!! My biological family self-destructed at the turn of the millennium, and with it – 29 prior years of compounding experiences and expectations.

And all that is MINE to own… Nobody else’s…. Denying the damn fine people I call my extended family their loved ones over the holidays does nothing to change that.

The sting of nostalgia fades more each year for me during the holidays.

The sadness about what “was” turns more and more into a genuine gratefulness for what “is”…

…and an enthusiasm and wonder for what “will”.

I’m making new meaning with my folks, individually, for Christmas.

I’m making new meaning for the time when I reunite with my other halves and we embrace and howl in the next rev around the sun.

I’m so making holiday beer cheese spread when I get home tonight.