First December 24th outside Southern California.
First coat warm enough and appropriate for winter weather.
First family bible, I’ve been waiting for that since I was fourteen years old.
First time sitting with family in a church celebrating a holiday about Christ on Christmas Eve.
First hymn and Christmas carol sung with my own family, instead of someone elses family.

Twelve stops for stretching
Eleven-day rental car
Ten bathroom breaks
Nine people’s gifts
Eight kinds of tea
Seven stops for coffee
Six in-flight crackers
Five-hour flight
Four-hour drive
Three-story duplex
Two precious babies
And three whole pounds of Bulk Barn candy.

We ran out to see Goose and Monkey before we left for Toronto. I have yet to be able to connect with Moose and their parents, we missed them all together before we flew out.

I tried not to think about it, and was fine until I went to leave a message on their machine. “Hey guys, I hope you had a wonderful Christmas, I just wanted to call and tell you that I love you and,” choke, choke, “I miss you more than you know. Andwe’llseeyouwhenwegetback. Bye.” I had to slam down the phone before I started sobbing.

The night that we hung out with the girls, we played Malarky. It’s really funny watching teenage girls trying to lie. I know them well enough to be able to tell when they’re trying to define a word that is not in their vocabulary.

We spent the rest of the evening watching the Disney Channel and making a Mad Lib out of the Christmas Letter that their mom wrote up. I hope I don’t get in trouble with Mom. Teenage girls have a habbit of repeating everthing that everybody says.

The girls got off easy this year. I didn’t make them sing Police Stop My Car or play Carol of the Bells on the piano.

An excerpt from Christmas With My Mother:

“Yes, honey, alchohol and sugar make wine. Its called fermentation. When yeast breaks down, it pisses out wine. When yeast farts, it makes bread.”

Now that I’ve ruined bread and wine for you, here, have a Christmas picture.

Merry Christmas.

At BlogHer this year, it seemed like *everyone* who flew in to San Jose from out-of-state just had to make sure to leave the conference just long enough to go to the Sephora Store. The Sephora Store!

We may get our Christmas photos done today, so yesterday I decided to suck it up and go buy some make up.

It came with a DVD!? On the DVD, a pretty lady says “it takes 30 seconds to complete your whole look,” and then proceeds to spend FOURTY-FOUR minutes explaining how to apply all the stuff.

Huh? Now, I’ve never been a math wiz, but…

So Neil had to go and get me thinking.

Neil was lamenting having too many people on his blogroll, and not being able to keep up with all of them.

I used to use my blogroll as a portal to all the sites I read every day. I’d visit blogs based on other peoples blogrolls and links. I kept the blogroll small because I didn’t want it to be longer than the content on my blog, and because I didn’t want to spend 14 hours a day getting my fix.

I met a-bazillion people at Blogher and left with 100 Bloginess cards. After Blogher I came home and demanded that The Geek set me up with this strange new thing called an ARE-ES-ESS FEED, so that I could spend all day reading each and every one of all the blogs of all the people I actually got to meet at Blogher.

He built me a webpage where I could add RSS feeds provided I could find the link to that blog’s (atom) feed. I went through my cards and added all the ones that I could get to work in my feed. And promptly forgot about everyone else. The RSS feed won me over in a hurry.

Opps. Sorry BusyMom, I haven’t visited in 6 months because I couldn’t find your non-subscription-based feed. But I found you today!!! Yay! I’m back!

Who else have I inadvertanly abandoned?

I know how to add you if you are blogspot or typepad, or if you post the link to your feed on your site, but that’s it.

If you’re dying to see who’s on my feed, comment, and I’ll send you the link. I dont’ want to open all my bloggie-luvs up to comment spam so I won’t post the link here.

In other news, I SLEPT FOR ELEVEN HOURS LAST NIGHT! That’s happend maybe three times in my life, so yes, it is blog-worthy. Oh, and, both of us are le-sick. I don’t think that both of us have ever been sick at the same time before. Thank God that The Shopping is officially done.

Any post that begins with: “I should like write a post once in a while,” is probably not going to win me any new RSS feeds.

I’m not getting a cold. I’m not. I’m not! I’M NOT!

I’ve been drinking Throat Coat and AirBorne by the quart, sucking on the Cold Eze that a student gave me, blowing my nose like crazy, washing my hands like a maniac.
That said, has anyone got any “miraculous chicken broth” recipes?  Maybe I’ll get a comment from the free-range chicken broth people. Seriously, what is it about chicken soup? Should I go un-lazy myself and make some from scratch?

Christmas Shopping: Done (except WHAT do I get my father-in-law!!??)
Recipts: Filed
Office Secret Santa gift: Check
RSVP to Office “Holiday Reception”: Check
Recipe for Office “Holiday” Pot Luck: Forget it, I’ll bring Ice Cream and the Ice
Tolerate the “Retail Shopping Atmosphere” aka Christmas Musak: Fine. 

But, you can’t make me watch Pinocchio’s Christmas!
Also, it is currently TWO DEGREES ABOVE FREEZING where we will be spending Christmas this year.

Help me!