The Belated Christmas Post!

snow tree fixed
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry

Thanks to Jay, we haz internets again. Whooo! So here is the blog post I wrote on Christmas, only two days late.

We've had our fair share plus some of holiday trauma and drama here at Hangover Headquarters this past week. I'm not going to go into it for the most part, because it is not really mine to share. Suffice it to say that if you are looking for surreality in the everyday, going to the Buncombe County Courthouse two days before Christmas should definitely be on your lifetime agenda. There's nothing like trying to get to the clerk of court's office to do some important paperwork while the entire courthouse is having a Christmas party. Yep, there were tables of food and coolers of drinks (did you know that the registrar of deeds department boasts not one but two coolers, both labeled in giant letters as their property?) and karaoke carolers and children running amok in festive Christmas clothing. The clerk of court who gave us our paperwork was eating deviled eggs while in the background, amplified by two stories of marble echoes, a tribe of county employees mangled We Three Kings.

But! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that good cheer! We are all good here. Audrey & her cat Okra have moved in at least for the nonce and so it is all magic Santa cheer, since Okra is not used to dogs and the dogs are not as enthusiastic as one would think about welcoming their old pal Pebble's sister into the house, so we have caroling animals and crashes as our background music this fine Yule morning. Theo is eating wrapping paper; Django is running in circles with his Christmas squeaky and Perdita and Okra are locked into a battle of wills on the stairs. Audrey got a laptop from Santa, who also kindly provided a router, but of course the whole thing crashed this morning, so I've already been on the phone with Charter tech support for an hour. Yay tech support from Mumbai! We didn't even have to have that awkward Merry Christmas conversation!

Santa brought us all new pajama pants and socks and underwear - young Miles comments that perhaps he has, finally, reached full sock saturation point and maybe he doesn't have to get socks and underwear every single Christmas? Ha ha! Ah, the naivete of youth! As it was then, is now and ever shall be, my children: Christmas is about socks, underwear and pajamas. Also, calendars. Audrey gave me a great one that she has helpfully filled out with housekeeping tasks, a brilliant idea. No, really, I like it. And Miles gave me a wonderful piece of local art: a print with flying saucers attacking City Hall, which goes beautifully with a print my friends Tom & Linda sent me from Tucson: a woman saying Fuck Off, I'm Smoking in large cartoon letters. Hurray for art for Christmas! And candy. It's amazing how the kids' stockings were stuffed with my very favorite candies in the world - to wit, chocolate covered espresso beans, candied grapefruit slices and Swedish fish, but Santa is wise that way. Santa also is eating his way through the Pepperidge farm entertaining assortment of really good cookies that I bought for him yesterday in a moment of sugar deprived weakness.

Here is hoping that your holidays are just as full of sugar and love as ours.