comfort & joy
Dec. 28th, 2007 09:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ontologySo, Christmas.
Christmas Eve my senses all woke up. I'd been feeling as though I'd been walking through gauze, and suddenly it wasn't there anymore. I baked cookies and spun round and round the dining room singing.
And I really ought to talk about music --windandtherain sent me the Decemberists' The Crane Wife which I have been playing nearly non-stop, except when I have been playing Children Running Through and Billy Bragg & Wilco's album of Woody Guthrie songs Mermaid Avenue, and also Loreena McKennitt's newest An Ancient Muse which only arrived yesterday (it was late; Dad stuck a bow on it and gave it to me over breakfast). I should also talk about several books I have read recently that were awesome, and what happened today, which involved me getting the best haircut of my life, and shopping a great deal and it was all quite marvellous. But this post is far too long already and I should like to go to bed with a book and a bit of peppermint bark.
Christmas Eve my senses all woke up. I'd been feeling as though I'd been walking through gauze, and suddenly it wasn't there anymore. I baked cookies and spun round and round the dining room singing.
We'd planned to go to the Christmas Eve service at the Orthodox church next door, since it's -- well, next door, and we've got friends there, and our little church hadn't cared to have a service (Dad asked them, and they didn't want one, so we had a candlelight service Sunday morning instead). I suppose people must have been arriving -- they had a dinner beforehand -- but when it gets dark so early this way I don't notice. Anyway, come evening Heidi came in to tell me that Victoria wanted me, so I pulled on my cloak (shut up; it was cold but I didn't want to put on a whole coat just to run next door and my cloak is cosy) and ran out. We sat in the church basement while foodstuffs went up around us and various churchgoers bustled hither and thither, and we chatted about French and German (um, there's a story there; let me tell you sometime) and her awesome steampunk Edwardian jacket and then we wandered upstairs into Father Mark's office for one reason or another, where Sarah arrived a few minutes later with an armful of presents. (At least I think there was an armful of presents. There were brightly coloured rectangular sorts of things, anyway.) She handed me a long white box with a "Merry Christmas" or some such (look, I'm wretched at remembering the he said and she said bits of events which is all very bothersome because how can I write up amusing accounts of them later.).
I said something onomatopoeic and excited, because I love presents. And I opened it my usual way: pulling the ribbons off clumsily and shutting my eyes and groping around for the contents. Which were oddly small for the box.
I would like to thank with profoundest love and glee and giddiness and stunned-ness the dozen or so of you of my f-list who pooled your money to buy me an 80GB video iPod. (And particularlylady_moriel , who organised it and whose idea it probably was and who is anyway awesome, forsooth.) Honestly? I'm still too stunned to even think much about it. I sort of stammered and then spent the next several hours just clutching the box, white-knuckled with delighted shock. And then I poked round the box (Apple's packaging is so pretty) and managed to get all of the useful things detached and -- things. My mother actually cried when she found out. (She didn't know before.)
On the back, it looks like this.
In-between and after-times, I sat round a table with the girls (except Alessandra who scarpered off to Maine, the traitor) and ate food and talked about the usual sorts of things somewhat giddy girls on the edge of Christmas talk about, except for the bits when Victoria and Hannah decided that they needed me to allow them to steal Christmas cookies from my cupboards, and we all ate entirely too many chocolate chip chocolate peppermint cookies. Then we went into church, which I thought was lovely and very fascinating -- all sung, although someone ought to have reminded me not to wear high-heeled boots, because the service was rather long and my lower legs were beginning to feel numb. But the singing and the candles were magical.
After well-wishing and hugging and last-minute chattering, we trudged all the long way back home. Then I spent the next two or three hours attempting to set up my iPod.
This took forever and ever partially because I had to do it while eating dinner and cleaning up and unwrapping our Christmas Eve pyjamas, but mostly because I had never got round to downloading the newest version of iTunes (I had the one back when it was still green, and we've had so many disk space issues that I just didn't bother upgrading, since the old worked fine). So I did. And this took at least an hour, perhaps longer. Seriously, iTunes is ridiculously full of downloady things. And then I had to plug in the iPod, set it up (which was short and simple), and wait for all of my music to download, which, since I have a lot of music, took rather a long time. In fact this, and not Christmas giddiness, was really the reason I was up and about past one, because I could not go to bed until I could take Moony with me. I'd been waitinghalf my life! all night! Naturally I was up another half hour or so pushing buttons and trying to be not-giddy enough to play one song all the way through. (iPods, by the by, are incredibly aesthetically pleasing. The clicking noise! The smooth, cool surface! The thin, sharp edges!)
Christmas morning I woke very abruptly at five thirty from an understandably restless sleep. I've always had this sort of rule -- I have some obsessive compulsive sorts of tendencies that can be very pushy -- that it is not on to trundle downstairs for stockings (or "five feet out the door", if I'm staying with my cousins, who hang stockings on the stair railing) until it is at least light-ish out. Six o'clock suits. Six thirty is better. I waited till six thirty. It was difficult, but Moony rather helped. And Kyra's official Disney Pirates of the Caribbean medallion, which I opened very early as it was sitting on my trunk next to me instead of downstairs under the tree. (I've tied it onto my satchel at the moment, actually. Partially as a test. If my satchel repairs itself when I plunge a knife through it, I'll know it's best not to wear the medallion just now.) Mum was actually awake, which was odd, because she never is (but then it's been many Christmases since we had a baby in the house), and she came down and watched us open our stockings, which were, as last year, topped with disease. Well, microbes, anyway. I now possess Yeast (in honour of my baking), to join the Black Death and Bookworm on my desk. There were also useful things like a bicycle chain repair thing and lots of colours of eyeshadow and chocolate and hair things and...things. (Lest this become a v. dull laundry list!) And a gift card for thirty dollars at Claire's!! -- from an anonymous person who conspired to bless out family with gifts this year.
There was also bacon for breakfast. And sausage. And rye bread, which Mum found for me and I was completely thrilled about. Nothing can match the rye from the Jewish bakery down the road from where we lived in Massachusetts, but it's a taste of home. And, you know, proper bread. I spoilt myself with the nice crusty rolls I was making from the thirty or so loaves of dough someone gave us back in October, and so I've mostly lost my taste for supermarket bread. I want rye and bagels and more crusty rolls. I miss Panera. And the city. And independent bakeries wherever one casts one's eye.
We started on presents around ten, took a break two thirds of the way through, and came back in the early evening, after we'd eaten (pork roast, saturated in maple syrup and orange zest and cranberry sauce). I love opening presents -- I love presents in general, and I mean to post something philosophical about it eventually, but it's more than Getting Stuff. I like the way presents have a flavour of the giver, a flavour of the receiver, and a flavour of how the giver sees the receiver. I like the way anonymous bright shapes turn into so many things that will come into the fabric of one's life. I like the physical act of opening presents, the tearing of the wrapping paper and the blind groping and the surprise. I like giving presents, only I never have much of any money and don't like to buy things that people will be indifferent to, so Christmas is always a bit mad for me that way. Dad I bought a book (Ivan Doig's Dancing at the Rascal Fair) which I'd been keen on reading and which is, he says, one of his top five favourite books; I found a beautiful painted wooden birdhouse for Mum (a decoration, not for actual birds); Timmy got chocolate covered Oreos, because the things that he likes are a) video games and b) food, and video games are too expensive; for Heidi I found some pretty hats and stuck in an extra Oreo for good measure. Everyone loved their presents and I was very pleased. (Now I shall have to see how my friends like their presents, which is...fanfiction I haven't finished yet. I found my good pen, though. This bodes well. Anyway two are nearly done. They can be Happy 2008 presents.)
My bed full of presents-that-were.
I said something onomatopoeic and excited, because I love presents. And I opened it my usual way: pulling the ribbons off clumsily and shutting my eyes and groping around for the contents. Which were oddly small for the box.
I would like to thank with profoundest love and glee and giddiness and stunned-ness the dozen or so of you of my f-list who pooled your money to buy me an 80GB video iPod. (And particularly
lady_moriel , who organised it and whose idea it probably was and who is anyway awesome, forsooth.) Honestly? I'm still too stunned to even think much about it. I sort of stammered and then spent the next several hours just clutching the box, white-knuckled with delighted shock. And then I poked round the box (Apple's packaging is so pretty) and managed to get all of the useful things detached and -- things. My mother actually cried when she found out. (She didn't know before.) On the back, it looks like this.
Which, really, nearly made me cry, because i.) ELIOT! PRUFROCK! WIN!, ii.) aww, you guys, and iii.) I'd kind of, you know, when I'm silly and daydream about odd things, thought about getting "do I dare disturb the universe?" on an iPod if I ever got one, as a sort of reminder, and because it's lovely. You lot know me too well, you know. (The card with the names on it said, "Another Moony." Because lady_moriel's is named Sirius for, various reasons, so ages ago I decided that I would get a white or a silver and name it Moony, because I am sort of a fangirl nerd enthusiast. And "another" because she sent me a stuffed werewolf for my birthday. So he is Moony, and now I'm not entirely sure whether I can play music on full moon nights.)
lady_moriel's is named Sirius for, various reasons, so ages ago I decided that I would get a white or a silver and name it Moony, because I am sort of a In-between and after-times, I sat round a table with the girls (except Alessandra who scarpered off to Maine, the traitor) and ate food and talked about the usual sorts of things somewhat giddy girls on the edge of Christmas talk about, except for the bits when Victoria and Hannah decided that they needed me to allow them to steal Christmas cookies from my cupboards, and we all ate entirely too many chocolate chip chocolate peppermint cookies. Then we went into church, which I thought was lovely and very fascinating -- all sung, although someone ought to have reminded me not to wear high-heeled boots, because the service was rather long and my lower legs were beginning to feel numb. But the singing and the candles were magical.
After well-wishing and hugging and last-minute chattering, we trudged all the long way back home. Then I spent the next two or three hours attempting to set up my iPod.
This took forever and ever partially because I had to do it while eating dinner and cleaning up and unwrapping our Christmas Eve pyjamas, but mostly because I had never got round to downloading the newest version of iTunes (I had the one back when it was still green, and we've had so many disk space issues that I just didn't bother upgrading, since the old worked fine). So I did. And this took at least an hour, perhaps longer. Seriously, iTunes is ridiculously full of downloady things. And then I had to plug in the iPod, set it up (which was short and simple), and wait for all of my music to download, which, since I have a lot of music, took rather a long time. In fact this, and not Christmas giddiness, was really the reason I was up and about past one, because I could not go to bed until I could take Moony with me. I'd been waiting
Christmas morning I woke very abruptly at five thirty from an understandably restless sleep. I've always had this sort of rule -- I have some obsessive compulsive sorts of tendencies that can be very pushy -- that it is not on to trundle downstairs for stockings (or "five feet out the door", if I'm staying with my cousins, who hang stockings on the stair railing) until it is at least light-ish out. Six o'clock suits. Six thirty is better. I waited till six thirty. It was difficult, but Moony rather helped. And Kyra's official Disney Pirates of the Caribbean medallion, which I opened very early as it was sitting on my trunk next to me instead of downstairs under the tree. (I've tied it onto my satchel at the moment, actually. Partially as a test. If my satchel repairs itself when I plunge a knife through it, I'll know it's best not to wear the medallion just now.) Mum was actually awake, which was odd, because she never is (but then it's been many Christmases since we had a baby in the house), and she came down and watched us open our stockings, which were, as last year, topped with disease. Well, microbes, anyway. I now possess Yeast (in honour of my baking), to join the Black Death and Bookworm on my desk. There were also useful things like a bicycle chain repair thing and lots of colours of eyeshadow and chocolate and hair things and...things. (Lest this become a v. dull laundry list!) And a gift card for thirty dollars at Claire's!! -- from an anonymous person who conspired to bless out family with gifts this year.
There was also bacon for breakfast. And sausage. And rye bread, which Mum found for me and I was completely thrilled about. Nothing can match the rye from the Jewish bakery down the road from where we lived in Massachusetts, but it's a taste of home. And, you know, proper bread. I spoilt myself with the nice crusty rolls I was making from the thirty or so loaves of dough someone gave us back in October, and so I've mostly lost my taste for supermarket bread. I want rye and bagels and more crusty rolls. I miss Panera. And the city. And independent bakeries wherever one casts one's eye.
We started on presents around ten, took a break two thirds of the way through, and came back in the early evening, after we'd eaten (pork roast, saturated in maple syrup and orange zest and cranberry sauce). I love opening presents -- I love presents in general, and I mean to post something philosophical about it eventually, but it's more than Getting Stuff. I like the way presents have a flavour of the giver, a flavour of the receiver, and a flavour of how the giver sees the receiver. I like the way anonymous bright shapes turn into so many things that will come into the fabric of one's life. I like the physical act of opening presents, the tearing of the wrapping paper and the blind groping and the surprise. I like giving presents, only I never have much of any money and don't like to buy things that people will be indifferent to, so Christmas is always a bit mad for me that way. Dad I bought a book (Ivan Doig's Dancing at the Rascal Fair) which I'd been keen on reading and which is, he says, one of his top five favourite books; I found a beautiful painted wooden birdhouse for Mum (a decoration, not for actual birds); Timmy got chocolate covered Oreos, because the things that he likes are a) video games and b) food, and video games are too expensive; for Heidi I found some pretty hats and stuck in an extra Oreo for good measure. Everyone loved their presents and I was very pleased. (Now I shall have to see how my friends like their presents, which is...fanfiction I haven't finished yet. I found my good pen, though. This bodes well. Anyway two are nearly done. They can be Happy 2008 presents.)
My bed full of presents-that-were.
There is Yeast, and steampunky button-up legwarmers, and aprons, and earrings, and books, and CDs, and curtains, and, um, a stick of summer sausage and a package of peppermint bark, and stamps, and notebooks, and socks, and a Magnetic Poetry calendar, courtesy of our fairy godparents (also responsible for the curtains). I have got knee-high striped socks at last! And aprons! The brightly coloured one in back is hand-sewn by Miss Victoria herself, and the two blue ones were hand-made by someone who sells aprons on the internet from whom my mother purchased. (She was extremely wonderful, because Mum ordered the ruffled ones for me and her and Heidi, and the woman threw in the checkered ones and two men's aprons for my father and brother as extra. The ruffled one is for when I am pretending that my oven is powered by steam and gears. The checkered one is for when I bake cakes for no reason in heels and pearls. The brightly coloured one is for when I am very bohemian and wear funny colours and experiment with sugar.) The books are from my father: Making Movies and The Discovery of Poetry. The former Dad said was excellent, and as I wish to be a filmmaker nothing could be better! The latter I have read and loved and need to own because it is full of wonderful writing exercises and all sorts of lovely things and Frances Mayes and I see the same way about poetry. There is another book from my mother: Do You Speak American? I have the authors' previous venture and book-that-goes-with-their-PBS-series The Story of English which is made of awesome and win, and I have also read this one, and, wow, all of my books were really geeky this year. (Well, last year I got The Book of Ballads and The Oxford Book of American Poetry and Quidditch Through the Ages + Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, among others, so it isn't as though it's a new pattern.) Dad also got me a video with three episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus on, which is, of course, fantastic. The blank books are from my cousin: one is one of those beautiful magnetic flap books with the creamy pages and ribbon bookmark they've got at Borders which I am always lusting after, and the other is for writing music in. They are not only practical and splendid, but they look really good, too! And my step-grandmother got me wooden beaded earrings with Chinese letters on, which was very exciting as I did want some Oriental sort of jewellery to go with the Firefly-ish clothing I have been slowly collecting.
Not in this picture is an earring holder from Mum, which was being used at the moment, and a pin from my brother which seems to have ended up in my cardboard box of miscellany, and some other things I have probably forgotten. Also not pictured is one of my more spectacular and surprising presents.
The last present I opened (well, the next-to-last, becausemidenianscholar sanctioned me to open hers last of all) was large, but light. The cardboard box beneath the paper was duct-taped NIGH UNTO INSANITY. Mum would not let me have scissors or a knife, which was very cruel. Fortunately duct tape rips.
When I finally got the box open, a CD spilled onto my lap amidst much packing material. It was Patty Griffin's newest, Children Running Through, which I naturally wanted very much (and indeed nearly bought for Dad's Christmas present!). I was happily exclaiming over it and pulling off the plastic when Dad said, in his best casual voice, "Oh, what's that bit of paper there?"
A bit of paper had fallen onto my lap, but I'd thought it was only part of a packing slip and ignored it. Now I picked it up and unfolded it.
Reader, it was concert tickets.
To the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.
Where Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller are all playing together on the twenty-fifth of January.
(And we are not exactly basking in money. It helps that this is something Dad wants to see tremendously himself. But it is still rather a splurge, and wonderfully, splendidly shocking and completely unexpected.)
I love Christmas gifts that last a bit longer that way. Honestly. I keep remembering this and squeeing to myself. (I get to dress up and go to a concert in a great shiny music hall.)
So that was my Christmas. We did cosy family things and enjoyed each other's company. I had pie and went to bed very early (for me) as I was dead exhausted. In fact I slept twelve hours.
Not in this picture is an earring holder from Mum, which was being used at the moment, and a pin from my brother which seems to have ended up in my cardboard box of miscellany, and some other things I have probably forgotten. Also not pictured is one of my more spectacular and surprising presents.
The last present I opened (well, the next-to-last, because
midenianscholar sanctioned me to open hers last of all) was large, but light. The cardboard box beneath the paper was duct-taped NIGH UNTO INSANITY. Mum would not let me have scissors or a knife, which was very cruel. Fortunately duct tape rips. When I finally got the box open, a CD spilled onto my lap amidst much packing material. It was Patty Griffin's newest, Children Running Through, which I naturally wanted very much (and indeed nearly bought for Dad's Christmas present!). I was happily exclaiming over it and pulling off the plastic when Dad said, in his best casual voice, "Oh, what's that bit of paper there?"
A bit of paper had fallen onto my lap, but I'd thought it was only part of a packing slip and ignored it. Now I picked it up and unfolded it.
Reader, it was concert tickets.
To the Carnegie Music Hall in Pittsburgh.
Where Emmylou Harris and Patty Griffin and Shawn Colvin and Buddy Miller are all playing together on the twenty-fifth of January.
(And we are not exactly basking in money. It helps that this is something Dad wants to see tremendously himself. But it is still rather a splurge, and wonderfully, splendidly shocking and completely unexpected.)
I love Christmas gifts that last a bit longer that way. Honestly. I keep remembering this and squeeing to myself. (I get to dress up and go to a concert in a great shiny music hall.)
So that was my Christmas. We did cosy family things and enjoyed each other's company. I had pie and went to bed very early (for me) as I was dead exhausted. In fact I slept twelve hours.
And I really ought to talk about music --
windandtherain sent me the Decemberists' The Crane Wife which I have been playing nearly non-stop, except when I have been playing Children Running Through and Billy Bragg & Wilco's album of Woody Guthrie songs Mermaid Avenue, and also Loreena McKennitt's newest An Ancient Muse which only arrived yesterday (it was late; Dad stuck a bow on it and gave it to me over breakfast). I should also talk about several books I have read recently that were awesome, and what happened today, which involved me getting the best haircut of my life, and shopping a great deal and it was all quite marvellous. But this post is far too long already and I should like to go to bed with a book and a bit of peppermint bark. 
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 10:44 am (UTC)And
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Date: 2007-12-30 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 12:20 pm (UTC)Much Mermaid Avenue love, too.
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Date: 2007-12-30 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-30 03:27 am (UTC)Through good fortune, I've actually seen it twice now: if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend watching it!
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Date: 2007-12-31 02:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 03:24 pm (UTC)And I can't believe you get to seen Shawn Colvin and Patty Griffin! -envies-
&hearts
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Date: 2007-12-31 02:38 am (UTC)(Now I've got to go find our Shawn Colvin album. She's one of those musicians who's sort of been there in my childhood and so I've never given her a proper listen. Dad says she is excellent live, though.
ALKHSDGLKHG. *giddy*)
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Date: 2007-12-29 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-29 05:46 pm (UTC)Where did you get those fabulous black lace gloves in the pictures? I've been wanting some like that for ages, and don't know where to look! :-)
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Date: 2007-12-30 01:26 am (UTC)I found the gloves at Claire's last year! I think they were only about seven dollars. Lately I haven't seen that style around, although Claire's always has a lot of different sorts of fingerless gloves, but a friend just got identical white ones. It probably depends on one's particular store, so you can give yours a look if you've got one. :D
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Date: 2007-12-29 08:16 pm (UTC)Also, I love the dress you're wearing in those pictures. I would wear it every day. :D
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Date: 2007-12-30 02:41 am (UTC)I found it for only seven dollars! I do wear it every day, pretty much. The only problem is that it's a bit short and I've got to be very careful about bending over. :p
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Date: 2007-12-29 08:23 pm (UTC)I'm glad your Christmas was bright and shiny :)
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Date: 2007-12-31 01:26 am (UTC)(And three cheers for giant microbes! I got one for my friend a couple of years ago and they are indeed very ace.)
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Date: 2007-12-31 02:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-31 06:48 am (UTC)