Saturday, December 29, 2001

Borrowed shoes painfully tight, as my sister's feet are small, borrowed dress not warm enough (I knew I should have brought some nice clothes home with me for break), but it was worth it anyway, because we got to see The Nutcracker in Boston, and although ballet itself doesn't usually do much for me, it was wonderful to watch, especially the magician-uncle person, the one who gives Clara the nutcracker, because he got to fly, vaguely dragon-like, magnificent in his purple cape. I want to be him.

spake the Amanda Hope at 4:09 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

Thursday, December 27, 2001

Ok. Now that Blogger appears to be functioning normally...

Christmas was a good day overall. Thanks to our preparations, there was good food all day, and I felt more stuffed than I had in a while. I got nice presents, more than I expected, considering all I asked for was a few CDs. Grandma turned out to be the only relative we had over, and it was nice to have her around. There wasn't too much of that down time where no one knows what to do, and when there was free time I spent it making a few phone calls, listening to the Crazy for You soundtrack a few times, and translating a few sentences of the Greek New Testament that my mother gave me before deciding that I needed the Greek lexicon I'd left at Colgate. In the evening, after dinner, I got out my mother's old guitar, and she helped me restring and tune it so I could start figuring out notes and chords and things, since picking up guitar is one of those little random projects I've created for myself over break. And I was content.

In the end, I don't know whether Christmas came or not. We went through the motions, as we always do, but it lacked the special Christmas warm fuzziness, the feeling, whatever it is, that makes Christmas different from everything else. That's not to say that it was in any way sad or depressing. It's just that after all the obviously Christmas-like things were over, I quickly forgot exactly what the occasion was, and had to think for a second to remember the date. And by the end of the day, even though the holiday that we were celebrating had escaped my mind, all I could think was that it had been a really great day.

spake the Amanda Hope at 9:59 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

Monday, December 24, 2001

We're spending Christmas at home this year, which is strange. For most of my childhood we spent Christmas Eve at my mother's parents' house, and Christmas Day at my father's parents' house, and arrived at home for our own Christmas celebration very late at night on Christmas or early the morning after. I remember being vaguely surprised when I first realized that my friends spent their Christmases at home.

After a while we cut down on the travel a bit. My Babcie (great-grandmother, yay Polish) died, and so we didn't have the Christmas Eve party at her house to go to. Sometimes we'd visit one or the other set of grandparents after the holiday instead of before. The travelling didn't all pile up the way it used to, and sometimes we even found ourselves in our own beds late Christmas Eve, and in our own house Christmas morning.

It seems weird thinking that we just don't have many holiday traditions outside of the travelling tradition itself. I love being at home for Christmas, in fact, when my parents were trying to decide what to do for the holidays this year, I suggested staying at home. I find the travelling sort of tiring, even if it's the only thing I'm used to doing. But when we're at home, it's as if we don't know what to do with ourselves. I think back to the other few Christmases we've spent at home, trying to remember how we passed the day. We wake up with a feeling of anticipation, as if something should be happening right away. It's almost confusing to realize that there's nothing we have to do, no place we have to go. I take a nice shower, have a light breakfast. We open presents, then spend most of the day tinkering with them. We snack on Christmas cookies and my mom cooks a nice dinner. We listen to the high school Christmas concerts on WATD. We try to neaten the place up a bit. We sleep. We have all this energy, as if there's places to go, things to do, relatives to socialize with, and there's not.

Generally we've always travelled to our relatives' houses because we're settled far away from my parents' respective families. No one ever comes all the way out here. I honestly have trouble remembering the last time any of our relatives besides my grandparents came out here to visit. But oddly enough, that's about to change. One of my cousins is living in Mansfield now, and he might come here for Christmas dinner with his girlfriend. And since my grandfather died, my grandmother will be spending the day here too. So we'll have people here, and I'm still not sure what we're going to do with ourselves.

This year, we're making up for our lack in traditions through cooking, apparently. My mother prepared an intricate menu which is being prepared entirely tonight, to save trouble tomorrow. Potato pierogies and cheese pierogies and scalloped potatoes and marinated chicken for dinner, and apple walnut waffles for breakfast with sausage and real maple syrup, and vegetables and dip and spiced cider and the various cookies that we have around to snack on all day. The preparation is keeping Christmas Eve from being boring, but tomorrow I imagine we'll be restless again, with all the work done, wondering what to do.

spake the Amanda Hope at 9:31 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

Sometimes I wonder whether I'm insane or just a bad person. And I honestly don't know which one to hope for.

Gah, this silly head of mine.

(Festive thoughts, eh?)

spake the Amanda Hope at 6:24 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

In case you're interested, I will be guest-blogging for mollie at book of days until January 4.

spake the Amanda Hope at 12:45 PM (linkme)
spake the voices