Oops

Havent updated in a bit huh?

We survived Christmas in Martha's Vineyard reasonably unscathed, though there needs to be more rugs and curtains up in that house or something because I don't care how big the house is (and it is a quite large house) 14 loud people all up in it is an express train to overstimulationville. But I had cell23 with me to buffer a lot of it with hugs and petting and handling the neverending energy of G, who still managed to get on everyone's nerves a little all weekend just by being an active, attention hungry ten year old boy. He's good at that. cell23 tanked him like a pro though. Glad there is one kid in the family still young enough to enjoy a new uncle. :)

I didn't get too too much in terms of loot which was fine by me, though Dad fretted at me about getting my phone soon because he felt bad about there not being very much under the tree for me. Whatever, I don't mind having my big ticket Christmas present delayed a bit. I also plugged my ipad into the living room TV and showed everyone the photos, to awws and laughter. The family favorites seem to be the ones of harinezumi dancing, which admittedly are qute funny, especially the one of him getting down doing his thing and Reggie side-eyeing the fuck out of the long-limbed muppet gleefully disrobing beside him.

Actually, no, I'm just going to post that picture, it really is too funny not to share.



I really just wanna put a thought bubble over his head that says "...white people..."

This was also a great weekend to break in The Fancy Coat. I don't think I've mentioned The Coat before - when going through her mother's things after the funeral, Anna and her family dug up this Coat. I keep putting it in capitals because this coat is so very extra - it's a long fitted black wool evening coat, with this giant poofy yak hair collar and cuffs to match. I put this thing on and immediately start mincing about singing "Cruella De Vil, Cruella De Vil, if she doesn't scare you, no evil thing will...." Apparently Barbara had worn this coat to a Broadway show and afterwards was pretty heavily squeed at for it by none other than Harvey Fierstein, who I can just imagine shitting himself in gravelly voiced fabulous glee. Fancy coat is not only fancy but it is also quite warm, which came in handy. It gets cold by the ocean in winter, who knew. :/

We didn't honestly do all that much on the Island other than have Christmas - there was a nice Christmas Eve stroll through a mostly shuttered for the season Oak Bluffs, which was its own weird form of nice without the tourists in the same way that the Valley is lovely right around now and over the summer without the students. Other than that it was mostly just hang around the house, take turns cooking for 14 (don't get me started about the jacked up food prices out there) and Christmas morning be cheerfully fussed at and around by everyone in among the gorging on dinner (cell23 repeatedly expressed regret at growing up white as he loaded his plate with ham, collards and Nuke's macncheese), the present scramble, the yankee swap (considerably less mean than last year and I walked away with ANOTHER tin of Pepparkakor) and the gingerbread house making contest, which I bagged out of due to uterus tantrum and critical spoon failure. (Also? I hate gingerbread houses... they're kinda neat in theory, but ultimately seem like a colossal waste of food to me. And the gingerbread that comes in the kits is usually nasty anyway.)

Weirdly, and somewhat concerningly I didn't see all that much of our paterfamilias - Dad spent the holiday under the weather with a bad cold and would make appearances for meals and present unwrapping and then withdraw back to bed with his iPad. They've had to take him off his Celebrex after the last time his heart was acting up at the end of last summer, and he is visibly stiffer and slower aside from the cold. Well, the man did just turn 85 after all, I suppose his age had to catch up to him sometime, its just a little sobering to actually be all "Yeah you know what? Dad is old." That said, he was up to causing trouble with the sisters a few times, some of which ended with Vicki playfully scotch taping his mouth shut for a few minutes while she wrapped presents. (I'm not going to repeat the deliberately sexist comment he'd dropped to warrant that, but lets say successful troll was successful.)

The day after Christmas was almost comical in how quickly the family packed up the house and their cars and scattered to beat the storm barrelling up the coast. Drew and I had planned to leave then anyway as we had work on Thursday, and as it was we made it back to Sunderland just shy of the storm; the girls and Dad were forced to stop in CT for the night after their attempt to leave. Hey, least they got off the island at all.

Last couple of days have basically been me sleepwalking through work, enjoying our first significant snowstorm, attempting to exorcise the last of the Vague Plague and the rest of the Christmas shopping for the kidlets, who will open the rest of their presents tomorrow at their grandparents'.(Also randomly running into John Hodgman while getting cat litter last night... lolwut) I do not have much planned for the End of The Year other than a gathering at the McGurks that evening and possibly some Rome viewing on Happy Hangover Day afterward, but I'm looking forward to closing 2012 and starting Year 13. So far my goals for the year are to actually finish this book I'm woring on, bead up a storm, get atop my finances and learn to bake tennis rolls, seeing as I'm sick of not having them while not in NY. I think its a quite managable goal set. We'll see how I do.

That's really all that's doing in AndeeLand.