Calmer

So some of you might have read the emo rant that was Wednesday’s post.  Sorry about that.  Well not the video clip, not sorry about that.  That’s fucking hilarious.

In short, things got a lot better.  Well a little worse, but then a lot better.

After leaving late-early - got an email from the boss at 2:00 saying "go home", didn’t receive until after 3:30 because I was cleaning our equipment cage - I went home.  And I got sick.  My stomach said, "Merry Christmas, asshole!  Here’s a whole lotta’ badness," and that was a joy.  Luckily, after much intense but brief unpleasantness, it passed and it was all out of my system.

Then I found out one of my previous ideas for a Marion gift was back in stock.  So I had to haul ass to that store before their early Christmas Eve closure at 6:00.  I wasn’t thrilled at this last minute shopping, which was keeping a waiting Marion, um, waiting longer…  But joy of joys, some of my gift giving woes were to be solved!  Let me re-iterate for a moment something I brought up before:  My favorite part of Christmas is going nuts with giving gifts whenever I can.  So out of all the bad shit that happened leading to Christmas, my inability to pull the gift thing together was really the rotting starfish on my Christmas tree.  Having to run my ass down to Bed Bath and Beyond through the slush and rain was a Christmas orgasm at this point.

So I did.  And I got what I needed and more.

Alright, I gotta speed this story up.

So I got home, wrapped presents, and got a Zipcar to bring the heavy one over to Marion’s for gift opening with the family on Christmas Day.  Doing that, I picked her up to come hang out with me at my place for Christmas Eve.  She was upset with me.  I gathered that she had some expectations about how she wanted to spend Christmas Eve, and me showing up a lot later than expected - after 6:00 at this point - was part of that plan.  Add that to the fact that she was liking the day, and everyone else in her world (myself included) seemed to be having a shitty day, and it was a situation where my day had become immensely better and hers was getting worse.

It righted itself pretty quick though.  We got ourselves fed (which went a long way), and we talked briefly.  For me, I was just really happy to see her.  I had a rough day.  But yeah, the evening got a lot better.  Had the weather been nicer, there were a few things we might have rather done.  But it was really awesome to lay in the pouf watching Lost all night together.  We waiting until 10pm to open some of our presents to each other; something of my family’s Christmas tradition as I was growing up.

The present that I was so nervous about getting her was a hoodie from Victoria’s Secret.  She loves VS, and she loves the PINK line there.  But I never know if someone is going to like clothing.  I happen to know she’s particular about her clothing, and that she’s never gotten a clothing gift she’s liked.  So this was a gamble for me.  She loves the hoodie though.  :-)  So yay me!  It was a victory that went a long way.  Then she opened some Bodum double-wall glass mugs that I bought for her.  Just one of those things we’ve both eyed and thought, "I totally don’t need these but they sure would be nifty for drinking tea."

For me, I got a stocking with some little stuff:  Two sets of chopsticks, some Ferrero Rocher candies, some Hello Panda cream-filled cookies, and Grandma’s Dead: Breaking Bad News with Baby Animals - a postcard book of insnaely cute baby animals with hideously inappropriate messages.  (If I have your mailing address, you might be getting one…)

The next day on Christmas Day, yesterday, we slept in, played, and had a generally nice morning together.  Eventually we made our way back to her apartment.  Her parents and her sister came over around two o’clock for deserts and gift opening.  It wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected.  Her family is - in comparison to my own, mind you - quite colder than I am used to.  Not "cold" as in ruthless, or mean, or unkind.  Not at all.  They have always been quite kind - something that I’ve been really grateful for.  I just mean that they’re not exactly warm, not very outgoing and much of what you discuss with them is very much surface talk.  So all things considered, the encounter went very well:  I’d never really seen her father or her sister laugh at all, and that happened several times.  By the end of the visit, I felt like they were starting to accept me as someone they could open up to a little bit.  So that felt really nice.  Another small victory for Christmas.

We opened some presents before they left.  Since there was only one more present from me for Marion, she wanted to wait to open it until she gave me a few more presents for me later.  I got a really awesome shirt from her.  I want to wear it soon, but she wants me to wait to see if we can go back to Macy’s and see if a different size fits my skinny shoulders better.  But’s pretty awesome.  She seems to really get my sort-of-military style when it comes to getting a bit metrosexual.  From her parents, I got Fallout 3 for the Xbox 360.  Something I’ve been totally wanting, but wasn’t ready to drop the dough on.  That was super thoughtful, and I felt bad that I hadn’t been able to think of, or buy anything for them.  I hate when that happens.

So her family leaves, and it’s just Marion and I again.  We exchaged the last of our gifts.  From me she got a new 10-piece Cusinart pot and pan set.  It was the practical gift choice.  After her divorce, she was stuck with a set of cheap cookware, and only part of a set of nice cookware that her ex made off with the rest of.  The result was that she literally had about four or five pans and skillets of every size and shape you could ever need, but not a single, small, reasonably sized sauce pan to speak of.  So I’ve been plotting to correct that for quite a while.  From her I got two more gifts: Mirror’s Edge for the 360, which was a similar situation as Fallout 3 above.  So it was a good haul for gaming.  :-)  And then the awesome one:  She bought me a Merkur safety razor from The Art of Shaving.  You might recall that I threw out the shave gel and invested in starting a new shave kit; I’m totally converted over to wet shaving now.  My plan for the next phase was the begin searching for a safety razor to prepare for evenutally trying my hands at straight-razor shaving.  So this gift was extremely thoughtful.  The only bad part was I had just shaved that morning to clean up for the family visit, so I won’t be able to try shredding the fuck out of my own face for another several days.  I’ll try to let you know how that goes if you’re so inclined to find out.  Also in that was a gift card for a shave at The Art of Shaving.  I’m curious to know how a straight razor shave feels before I try to teach myself, and apparently there’s no barber shops I can find around Seattle that still do them.  But apparently The Art of Shaving does, in addition to selling razors and lathering supplies.  So when it warms up and I can get out to Bellevue, that’s what I’ll be doing.

The rest of last night, we hung out at my place.  Sat and read in the hot tub, lots of playing, more Lost binging, and yummy Japanese comfort foods.

For all my whining, things got a lot better.  Thanks for those that reached out to say hi and be generally comforting after my blog post on Wednesday.  Hank, we’ll get some lunch together when things calm down around here, for sure.