…because, let me tell you, that entry I lost yesterday (if by “lost” we mean “hit the escape key by accident”) was so great. I couldn’t lose any of the stupid entries, now could I? No. Had to lose the one, the only entry I’ve ever written that wasn’t, like, completely terrible. AAAAAGGGGGHHHH.
Okay. I’m moving on. From now on, we’ll refer to this whole episode as The Great Lost Thanksgiving Entry of ’02, and we’ll refer to it in hushed voices, with eyes cast downwards in gestures of respect and mourning. Won’t we? Moving ON.
So, uh, let’s see. Things are getting busy at work. I just volunteered for a project that involves my reading 19 hours of children’s books (in half-hour segments) onto tapes. That pretty much sounds like a dream job to me, friends. I’m pushing for the Narnia Chronicles and maybe The Hobbit and perhaps The Golden Compass and some of those Lemony Snicket books the kids like so much these days. The books can’t have any sex or swearing in them so that limits it a wee bit…I mean, I was pushing for The Stranger and The Second Sex, but the PIs on the project don’t seem to like that very much.
What else. What else that doesn’t remind me of The Great Lost Thanksgiving Entry of ’02. Sigh. Well, I guess Christmas is coming up all of a sudden. My mom just emailed me to say that she’s getting excited about putting lights up and having lots of time off from her school. Myself, personally, I’m getting excited about all the fat teacher presents she gets every year. She wields an iron fist at a very wealthy school where the parents have a HUGE appreciation for the educational profession, and every year she rakes in not only the Godiva chocolates and Number 1 Teacher Christmas ornaments but the Ann Taylor sweater sets and the Tiffany bracelets and the Cirque du Soleil tickets, hand over fist. On Christmas morning it’s usually just me and her and we spend an hour or three opening all her teacher presents, and then break for lunch, and then spend fifteen minutes on our own presents to each other. “Oh, a book. Thanks.” “Oh, socks! I need those! Now, would you please pass the gigantic fruit basket the repentant mother of a terrorizing five-year old sent?” Good times.
The other thing we do for Christmas, besides decorate a palm tree, is Spaghetti Lights. This is a fairly new thing at our house. Lighting in general is new, but Spaghetti Lights is just a couple of years old. Its genesis is this: Mom was trying to untangle a huge ball of lights and was having very little success. They’re the kind where you can switch from Flashing Very Quickly So As To Induce Epilepsy to Slow And Mellow Fade-In, and so on and so forth. She had them plugged in, for some reason, as she was trying to untangle them, and in her frustration she just threw them into a cut glass bowl she had by the door. There they were, still flashing and fading in, in a huge spaghetti ball of Christmas cheer. Just sitting there in a bowl. Instant fun, I tell you. I’m not so down with the Christmas tree thing, so for a while we put the presents under there, but we’ve recently switched to bringing in a fern or a palm or something. You know, that’s how they do in Florida. We’re crazy that way! Decorating palm trees! Because it never snows. Not even on Christmas.
So, there you go. My time since I got back from New York, which of course you’ll never know about since TGLTE’02, has mostly been spent in catching up at work and running around and getting invited to do holiday things and reacquainting myself over email with a friend from high school whom I haven’t heard from for about ten years. Getting ready to go on yet another trip. Got a tetanus shot today at work…I’m telling you, if it’s not electrodes, it’s a shot. Ow. Bellydance is supposed to be hard tonight…what if I can’t do snake arms because of my owie yucky tetanus arm? All kinds of unfair, y’all.