30

I was the last one to go to sleep last night, and as a result, I spent a lot of time online, researching lots of things and deciding what to do with my Christmas money. I also spent some time counting my posts, going back and remembering the past six months. I realized I skipped a week, around the middle of November. So, because it's Christmas Day, and presents have been opened and dinner has been consumed, and I've just commenced my yearly tradition of watching Pirates of the Caribbean, AND it's snowing on Christmas Day (something that hasn't happened in more than 100 years here in Georgia), I decided to post a quick message, just because.

Today is a kind of day that makes me wish our fireplace worked. The snow is falling fast and thick outside, and I'm sure there is coffee and homemade chocolate chip cookies in my near future. Santa was awesome to me this year; my family was, too. Since we're moving in less than a week, most of my gifts consisted of wonderful things for my kitchen. It makes me want to cook all sorts of things, right now, despite the fact that I'm super full from Nanna and Mom's awesome cooking. Ham, potato salad, deviled eggs, biscuits, okra. We're Southern, clearly, and I'm quite stuffed for the first time in awhile.

So now I'm sitting in my papasan chair, watching Captain Jack Sparrow commandeer things and Will Turner fall in love with Elizabeth, while I watch the snow out of the corner of my eye. Maybe it will stick and I can make a snowman. Or at least a snowball. Not a bad way to end a good day.

29

So many topics I could write about this week. But I think I will stick with the Christmas theme, since Christmas is only five days away. At least, that's what the five-year-old I nanny keeps telling me.

Christmas Eve is my favorite time of the year, aside from my birthday. There's just something about the anticipation, and the lights, and the food, and the friends and family that suddenly populate your house that makes it magical. I'm excited for this years Eve...I'm making most of the food, and there's a special gift for mom that I'm really excited about and may give to her early.

I love giving gifts to people. Probably even more so than the gifts I get under the tree.

A short entry this week, folks, as it's time to feed the cat and go get some dinner for myself.

Next time we meet, Christmas will be over and New Years will be upon us. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, be safe, be merry, be happy.

<3

28

Snow? Yes, dear readers, it did snow today. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), none of the beautiful white stuff stuck to the ground, so today is back to business as usual, although the benefits of my long wool coat are clearer today. It's cold outside, bringing to mind the less than awesome Christmas song "Baby, It's Cold Outside." The weather last night and today made everyone want to stay huddled indoors, next to a fireplace with coffee and someone they love. I hung Christmas lights, which somehow make the living room both brighter and warmer. I was humming Christmas songs the entire time, and so I would like to present to you my Christmas List of Top Five Holiday Songs!

1. Silver Bells, by any older artist
When I was little, I used to sit in front of the Christmas tree and sing Christmas songs to myself. I'm not as weird as I sound. But I always loved singing Silver Bells. The images of lights and snow and busy people make Christmas time in the city an awesome perk of living in said city. I am a city girl, everyone knows that, and a song celebrating a city Christmas instead of the traditional country Christmas will always be number one in my book.

2. The Train, by Celestial Navigation's
If you have never heard this, look it up and listen to it while sitting next to the Christmas tree. It's about a man sitting on a train on Christmas Eve, reminiscing about Christmas Eve's from his childhood. It varies from the normal holiday music in that it's spoken word, with instruments behind the words providing the continual sound of the train wheels. It says Christmas to me, and since they don't play it on the radio anymore I save it for Christmas Eve, when everyone is gathered together and our favorite songs are playing in the background, right before we go to bed and Santa comes around to stomp on the roof and bring things to us.

3. The Christmas Song, any good rendition
This is Christmas. That's why it's just called The Christmas Song. Enough said.

4. Sleigh Ride
In high school, our choir performed this song for our annual Christmas concert. It was fun, like always, but it also coincided with the year our class started to all get along and be friends. We all went to a traveling Christmas party, the weekend after the performance, and the whole time, the only line that kept going through my head was "there's a happy feeling nothing in the world can buy, when they pass around the coffee and the pumpkin pie." It stands out as one of my favorite Christmases; and I still use that line as a standard to any awesome holiday event.

5. Wonderful Christmas Time, by Paul McCartney
I saved the best for last. This has been my all-time favorite holiday song since I was very young. It's not Christmas until I hear this, and when I do, it's like the lights come on. It takes me back to Christmases of my childhood, and lends it's magic to any Christmas, making it more magical. I think I listened to it a lot during my senior year of college, during finals, to get me through that final push into adulthood. It worked.

So there you go, loyal readers, the top 5 Christmas songs from someone who thinks she has authority to say so. What are your favorite holiday songs?

27

It's finally December, which means, invariably, that it's finally cold. And we don't have heat in our house, because, being an old and poorly insulated rental property, said house would be way out of our budget to heat properly.

As I sit here basking in the warm-ish air emitting from the space heater, I think about Christmas. The big day is three weeks away, and though I'm further along in the holiday process than I was last year, I still feel behind. We decided not to get a tree here in the tiny and cold yellow house, opting instead for white lights strung all over the living room. I hardly have any Christmas decorations; turns out all my decorations were for the Christmas tree that we currently don't have.

I still love Christmas, though. My mom's house is all decked out, with white lights in the bushes and on the railing outside, red and green and white towels in the bathrooms, a tree brightly lit downstairs. It even smells like the holidays, something I realized when I visited home tonight. That's one of my favorite parts about Christmas, Thanksgiving, the whole last part of every year. I love the smells that take me back to when I was small, or that make me feel warm and safe and at home. It's something I try to recreate wherever I am. Tie that fact into my always trying to make wherever I am into something of a home, but that's another post.

Happy Christmas, readers. More on this joyful time of year next week.

26

While cleaning my room today, I found something that was very dear to me, and that I thought I had lost. There I was, digging through pockets of purses, trying to find these Christmas presents that I bought three months ago (which I also lost, but that's another story), when suddenly, my fingers in a tiny side pocket felt not plastic bag, like I was wishing, but something sharp and cold. Brow furrowed, I dug deeper, trying to finagle whatever was in that pocket out into my hand. Finally, the mystery item sprung forth, into the palm of my hand - two tiny diamond earrings that have been missing for almost a year. I would have sworn I had searched every purse in that bucket, at least twice. But here they were, yielded by my favorite black bag I got from Lenox Mall just before my freshman year of college. I felt like Carrie, when she had given up for lost her Carrie necklace, only to find it in the lining of her vintage Chanel purse. My earrings, however, had last made an appearance New Years Eve, and in the following months filled with breakups, moving, and job upheavals, I had counted these tiny treasures as lost forever.

I love unexpected surprises. I also love searching for something and finding something else, something better. Especially something that I'd given up on. It's one of life's little awesome tricks, and I love waking up each morning not knowing that good thing may happen that day.

For instance. Every holiday, I have this image in my head of the family getting together and getting along, making whatever day one of those perfect, exciting holidays much like the ones I remember from my childhood. However, that's silly, and I think this family of whom I speak stopped pretending to get along for my sake the older I got. And it hit me, after this Thanksgiving - why do I keep looking back, trying to recreate something that wasn't even real to begin with? Why rely on others to make holidays happy? I'm looking around this world, trying to make something mine, trying to carve out my own little niche to make my own little home, and there is no reason why I can't be in control of my own holiday happiness. So, next year, I am hosting Thanksgiving at my house, wherever I am. I am cooking. I am doing things according to my idea of what would make me happy and what Thanksgiving should be. And, hopefully, that would reduce the stress and resulting apathy of said family, making everyone's holiday better. And though it won't look like what I always thought it was supposed to look like, that doesn't mean it won't turn into something even better. Maybe, while looking for something else, we will find something even better.

Keep searching, loyal readers. Don't rest until you find what makes you happy.

Until.