Best. Thing. Ever.

Rob got a vacuum for Hanukkah, and it’s been thrilling me way more than him (of course). There’s a sensor on it that lets you know when the area you’re vacumming is clean. You have to stay in one spot with the machine until the light turns green, meaning it’s gotten up all the dirt it can, so it’s been a really slow progression around the living room. The dog is so upset by the large purple beast, but I am beside myself happy. Which means that I’m old.

Woo! That was fun, and i’m glad it’s over.

Christmas at my parent’s was more crazy than ever; we had my half-sister and her boyfriend and “Aunt” Virginia and Rob added to just me and my brother, all running around looking for the hidden numbered presents. My mom doesn’t like just a huge stack of gifts to be ripped into all at once, so she has a master list of numbers with names next to them. Each gift has a number on it, instead of the name, and is laid out somewhere on the first floor of the house. She’ll instruct one or two or three people to find whatever number, and then tell them (when everyone’s found the package that they’re supposed to find) that they can open it, or if they have to trade with someone. We had a brilliant time.

Hanukka is fun, too. Rob got me a gorgeous vintage piggy bank because I didn’t have one; and this “eight nights” thing is a lot of fun. Every night we light the candles and he’s been teaching me the prayers.

I went to my first Knicks game on Friday, and it was very cool until Lindsay Lohan showed up and Rob drooled in my hair.

I accomplished my 13-year-old goal of beating Super Mario Brother 2. It took about five hours (and an “infinite number of lives” cheat code, I’ll admit) to do it. I should say “we” did. Everytime something got too hard I passed the controller over to Rob (and sometimes he would get annoyed watching me die over and over again in the same spot and would demand I hand it over). Even still, I DEFEATED WART!

Yesterday, I hopped in the shower while Rob was in there, and he offered to scrub my foot with the buffer thing I use to make it soft. This means I had only one foot on the floor of the tub, which is a REALLY BAD IDEA. I wobbled, tipped, and fell over backwards onto Rob who tried to catch me and maintain his balance. We both collasped on the floor of the tub, me on him and him on tile. There was flying soap and water and swearing, and today we’re both bruised. I fell a second time trying to swtich places with him.

If you’re trying to be romantic, do it safely.

That’s all the news. Can you tell, from my lack of actual writing structure, that I’m brain dead? My New Years Resolution is to be not brain dead any more. It’s the holidays. And my job. There was a huge stink at work with my manager because I didn’t want to work New Years Eve or Day, and I had taken other holidays off, too. I was told I had to work one, so I said New Years Eve in the morning (I don’t work past 3:30 anyway). I didn’t get scheduled for it, though, so I’m working 8 hours… tomorrow. It is high time to really get my business into action. So there you go. Another New Years resolution.

i was determined to get up early and go shopping, but I got up at eleven, making me the laziest human being i know.

traditionally one of my favorite days of the year, christmas eve eve is the time i usually finalize my wrapping, clean the house, and make cookies. this year, i’m still in search of more presents, thanks to hanukkah, and ebay being a pain in my ass.

last night the mall looked like a nightmare; the parking lot was full to stuffed and even the highway near the mall was backed up. and with both the christians and the jews out last minute shopping, we’re looking at a mess.

bravely, i go forth.

i’m almost done shopping for presents. but not quite. it’s stressing me out.

my dog started a blog.

i bought four things off of ebay in the past month. one arrived broken, one came just fine, and two have not showed up, nor have the sellers responded to my emails.

leila got engaged!

i got new socks.

phil, this picture is for you. i took it while driving in the “no zone”.

I made way too much food for my “Christmahanukkah” party. I couldn’t help myself! When I start planning a party, my inner June Cleaver/Martha Stewart comes out full force, and I need to make sure everyone’s well fed and happy, and everything is decorated.

I’m not going to lie; one of my biggest goals is to be considered “the Ultimate Hostess”. Rob was a little bewildered though. “Hon,” he said as I blissfully piled things into our grocery cart, “this is a LOT of food.” (He was right, we have a ton of leftovers.) Mr. Wonderful that he is, though, he got everything I wanted, and he did most of the cooking for the party. When I got up the next morning, he was already in the kitchen washing dishes.

He’s so awesome.

We set up a “photobooth” with the webcam, and people used the different imaging modifications to take goofy pictures. You can check them out on Rob’s flickr account. Yeah, that’s my parents at the end, and my mother, who was completely wasted, thought it was funny to lick my dad. Anyway.

Saturday was our early Hanukkah party at his parents house, so we trekked down to Long Island. I really like his family; it’s full of people around our age to hang out with. We lit the menorahs (his parents have about ten) and then it was time for gifts. Everyone bought me presents! His sister-in-law picked out two Kosher cookbooks for me, and Rob gave me a Nano, upping my cool factor by about 100 points. It’s engraved on the back, and I’m not telling what it says, but it made me cry right in the middle of gift opening.

We have a Christmas tree (Rob’s first ever) and I put my Christmas gifts under it. Rob put his Hanukkah gifts next to it. He had to reinforce the ones for me with duct tape, because I seriously can’t wait when it comes to presents. Since he started buying gifts, I’ve been tied down, tethered, and locked out of different rooms, all because I can’t help but snoop around. I’m a horrible person.

My grandmother asked me today if I could tease her hair in the back.

“Sure!” I said, and stuck my tongue out.

She didn’t get it.

Anyway.

Her problem is that her hair, which was thin before, is really really thin now because of her face-lift. The anesthesia, apparently, makes hair fall out.

“Thinning hair” is the nice thing to say. She almost looks bald up top. Not that I’d ever tell her. I used her “teasing comb” (the one she had since well before I was born) to muss her hair up underneath and then smooth it on top so it looked like a nice, full head of hair. I pushed the fine, staticy strands one way, then the other. I piled them up, and they fell over. Then they all stuck to the comb. I stepped back.

“Oh. Oh dear.” I said.

“What?”

“Mmm… I’m, um, going to try again, ok? It’s not quite what I think you want.”

What I really wanted to say was that she looked like she stuck her finger in a light socket, and I’m not exaggerating, either.

I un-mussed and re-mussed, and pushed and pulled, and stepped back again.

“Well?” she asked.

You look bald, I thought. “Not quite.” I said.

Eventually we got it looking alright, but I don’t think I’m going to make a career out of being a hairdresser any time soon.

Year of the first Christmas you can remember? the 80′s are all a blur.

An early Christmas memory? Prying ornament hooks out of Gus’s two year old fist… and out of his two year old mouth.

Ever in a holiday play? Nope.

Favorite holiday ornament (Past and present)Past: The glass bunny. Present: My Target silver balls.

Decoration you dread seeing every year: The blow up figures on lawns that light up and inevitably collapse into ugly heaps of Christmas misery.

Classic Christmas song you never get tired of: “Winter Wonderland”, and “Baby, It’s Cold Outside”.

Classic Christmas song you loathe: Feliz Navid (Fe-lease on my dog. Fe-lease on my dog! Fe-lease on my dog, they make him itchy and he cries so loud!…)

Modern Christmas song you never get tired of: You know, not so much a fan.

Modern Christmas song you loathe: “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Mariah Carey. Gah. Ugh! Bleck!

Naughty or Nice? Depends on where I’m hanging my stocking. *wink!*

If you have a Christmas tree, real or artificial? Real.

Any holiday traditions unique to your family you’d like to share? We started one last year! Singing Christmas songs on Christmas Eve. Except I was tipsy, and I’m pretty sure Mom was, too, so it was all, “Freroshty the schnow man…” and “Jingle balls, er bells… haha… I said balls!”

If you were an elf what would your elf name be? Am-bits.

Favorite Christmas Movie: The animated Grinch movie.

Best Scrooge Ever: I hate Scrooge movies. I can sum them up for you in ten seconds, and then you can spend the rest of your holiday season on something more interesting. Watch: Crabby. Sleepy. Ghost. Ghost, ghost, ghost. Wakes up. Digs Christmas.

Favorite Christmas Special: Charlie Brown. No contest.

Favorite Misfit Toy: The one that wants to be a dentist.

Have you ever re-gifted? Yes

Do you still rush out and shop on the 24th? Nope. Yay for amazon.com!

Can you wrap presents well? Yes. I take great pride in my wrapping. (Sometimes, the tricky ones end up sucking)

What’s one thing you know will always be in your Christmas stocking? A notepad. I think my mom thinks it’s “The Ultimate Stocking Stuffer”. She’s never not given me one in a stocking, and it usually comes with pens, too. Mom, don’t ever stop with the notebooks. I’ve come to depend on them.

Best Christmas present ever? Jen’s Knitted Red Scarf, or the digital camera mom gave me last year.

Spill a holiday secret. I hate getting money from my grandparents every year, because I feel awkward taking cash.

Started on your Christmas Cards yet? No.

Do you bake Christmas cookies? Several batches.

You find yourself under the mistletoe with Pratt. What do you do? Swap him out for Greyton and pucker up!

Do you leave cookies out for Santa? No, Santa likes vodka in my family.

Can I refill your egg nog? As long as it’s not “Soynog”.

Instead of candles, I put a strand of Christmas lights, balled up, inside our Halloween jack-o-lanterns and put them on the porch. Doing this allowed us to leave them and not worry about fire unsupervised or the wind blowing them out. The effect was really pretty.

You might wonder why, a few weeks before Christmas, I’m bringing up Halloween decorations. It’s because they’re still on the porch.

“Rob,” I said sometime in early November, “I’m not touching those. I officially declare it your job to dispose of those pumpkins.”

We had carved them two weeks before Halloween as it was, so by the time the 31st actually rolled around, they had already started to get soft. I figured, though, that they’d be disposed of fairly quickly, and so it would be alright.

He said he would do it, too, but, well, you know the story of Clyde…

I brought them up last night for the millionth time.

“Oh, they’re gone,” he said. “I got rid of them… and I decorated our porch for Christmas. Want to see?”

“You did not!”

“I did, come look!”

He pulled back the blinds, opened the door and presented me with two black, foul smelling blobs decked out in Christmas lights that cheerfully sparkled amidst the goo. He grinned.

“Merry Christmas, Honey!”

Unfortunately, I’m not yet so hardened as Mrs. Pratt, and my “Look of Death” dissolved into laughter.

For some random reason I’m scheduled for a ton of hours this week at Starbucks. Good for my paycheck, bad for my sanity. REALLY bad for my sanity.

I almost killed myself in my car today when I had to swerve; someone came in my lane to get around a mail truck. The lack of power steering means a lack of swerveability (is that a word?), and I narrowly missed a head-on collision. I freaked out and called my mom, who told me to drop it off and my dad would look at it, so it’s there for now. I got home and fell asleep immediately because I don’t sleep well at night anymore when I have to open Starbucks the next morning. I used to wake up just fine (ok, with minimal bitching), but now that it’s December, it’s so dark when I get up that I wake up every two hours freaking out thinking that I’ve slept through my alarm. In the summer it was almost kind of nice to be up just as the sun was peeking over the hills and turning everything a pretty dusty pinky blue, but now it’s just black and cold.

I try to console myself about crawling out of bed every morning with the thought of a nap later on, but really, a nap takes place when it’s light out, and I’d like to be functioning like everyone else who has a normal life instead of in a drooly afternoon coma. Also, it makes the bed smell like coffee because, as Amachai has discovered, you can’t avoid reeking at the end of your shift. Worst of all, at noon there is not warm boy goodness in bed, so my feet get cold.

I took a nap anyway, and when I got up I was super cranky becuase of all the working and the car, and I hadn’t had anything to eat, so I sat down in the middle of the living room (on Clyde, the computer monitor, who is still in the middle of the fucking living room) and cried. I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried, and now my face is all crusty. Sexy, huh?