Thirteen: You're mostly a secret, partly a mystery

Wow. And thus, Christmas heads on its way for yet another year. Santa's coolin' his heels at the pole and we're left sweepin' up the wrapping paper.

Christmas eve was a tough day. It was gray and cold. I was up until 3 AM the night before doing my first Interneta update in months, my annual Holiday celebration. You can read about what I did on that day in the Story of the Christmas Rupee.

After dinner with dad and Deb, Eric suggested that we get the Super Nintendo out and play like in olden days. It seems to be the oldest surviving Christmas gift we've got (although we got it sometime before the actual holiday.) In under 2 hours I'd gotten to World 6 of Mario 3 before turning the thing off and feeling like I'd just spent the last two hours staring at a magic eye. I was mostly despondent, however, later when I went to find Mario 64, and it was not there. I'd hat it within reach of my N64 for years, and now suddenly I up and lost it. I've been somewhat depressed ever since, but I don't show it. We wrapped our gifts between 9 and 11 that night, the longstanding tradition of putting our wrapping off until Christmas eve no matter what.

I was a little delirious that night, hurrying to get the Christmas update up before dawn. Strangely, I couldn't force my body to fall asleep afterward. I'd set my alarm to 9:00 but by the time that hour rolled around I'd had less than 5 hours of sleep and was totally knackered. As a consequence, Christmas didn't really begin until 10:00 when I rolled out of bed and set out the Stockings, which mom had set aside and filled the night before. Then dad called and asked if we were all ready, to which I replied, "Uh, gotta jump in the shower."

Mom was at Tim's for the morning, so around 10:30 dad came over and we went to his place, leaving a note for mom on the front door. As we walked in, dad was caught off-guard by a phone call from North Bay, which was unfortunate timing as we couldn't really say "Thank you" for the cards we hadn't opened yet, so we lamely had to say "Call ya back later!"

So we got to opening gifts. It was your standard "Oh great I asked for this!" Christmas morning; Deb seemed to like the wine we'd gotten her, and dad, after falling prey to our socks diversion, liked the CD's we got him (although not to the extent I'd have hoped to be honest.) Then we set about opening our gifts and there was a very large one under the tree. I knew without opening what it was and immediately called dad, endearingly, a "sick, weird old man." Not because of the gift itself, but because of the headgames he'd been playing. He made a point of telling me how noplace had GH3 for PS2 (ah, we are the generation of acronyms) and such, which irritated me because I don't care about what I don't get. Of course I should have realized he was ribbing me, and I'd had a notion he was but blew it off because I didn't think the guy had the wherewithal to mess with me like that. But he did anyhow.

We had a nice, typically brief passaround of the phone thanking the folks in North Bay for their contributions to the Christmas cause and went home around noon. Mom had been kinda spooked seeing our note pinned to the door before she knew what it said. It was one of those things that would make you feel guilty if it weren't so amusing; harmless misunderstanding anyway.

We opened more gifts and then headed off to Toronto* where there was a lengthy delay before any more gifts were opened. We let the kids run around, they'd had a pretty full morning, as you might imagine.

*This is the first time we've ever left the house on Christmas day.

We played around with the kids on Cameron's new air hockey table (lucky kid) while Ali played Magnetic darts, all the while giving me a lecture on how megnetism works ("Y'see 'cuz it's magnetic so it sticks 'cuz that's actually what magnetic means!") She referred to the dartboard as a calendar "B'cuz I don't actually know the word for dis." She says "actually" a lot. It's actually adorable.

We did a lot of playing with glow sticks. Go figure, they get all this complicated stuff for christmas and they want to play with the simplest little things. Then Ali offended me a little by offering the biggest insult I've ever been given.

"You're a grown up."

I was shocked. I've never been accused of that before. It upset me a lot and put me in a bit of a foul mood. Well not really, but it was shocking. In the midst of this I realized that little kids exist as a chaotic element in the otherwise formulaic lives of adults. They exist and behave according to their own whims in a rigidly regimented world. And Christmas is bonkers for them, as you must know.

Aunt Karen noted how all-out this Christmas was, and I mused "I understand, y'know, the desire for parents to give their kids everything for Christmas. But y'know what? The kids don't really see much difference between everything and some things." After all, a kid can only play with a finite number of toys at a time. She agreed, thinking maybe she'd scale herself back next year. I just have my own chip-on-the-shoulder about how things keep getting more and more focussed on commercialism and consumerism. Some is great, but too much will destroy ya.

The evening wound down with dinner and some more entertaining of the kids. Before we ate, Tim innocently asked who was going to say Grace, and mom was, weirdly, totally on board with the idea even though we haven't said Grace since Great-Grandma was alive. Nobody was rude enough to ask if he was serious, so we did it. He said a by-rote prayer of thanks. Then we ate.

We headed back to Oakville to relax after a long day. I settled in and, instead of playing with any of my new toys, I decided to soend an hour or so playing Super Mario World, during which time I got to World 5 (Forest of Illusion.) Not bad. Afterward I fell asleep as we watched the first disc of How I Met Your Mother Season 2, but only toward the end of the last episode on there.

I had a dream last night I feel like I should have remembered. I mean, I did remember it and thought "Haha what a dream." It just came back to me. Somehow I got put into a big championship basketball game. I really wanted to look good and came out as a surprise talent, bt eventually got overwhelmed. I felt crowded in and had to trip some guy and we got into it. Then it gets a bit hazy. That was the first time in a very long while, if ever, that I've dreamed about sports glory.

Don't kid yourself, though, this entry has been accumulating all day long. It's not what the timestamp says. Closer to 12:45 AM the next day. If I don't note that, I feel like I'm lying to myself for later when I can't know.

Today was your typical post-Christmas day of vacation. Actually that's not true; I didn't spend the day fawning over my gifts, in fact I was still kinda engrossed in Mario World. I got most of the way done. I'll probably polish it off tomorrow and then crank out GH3. Eric and I sat around all evening and watched MuchMoreMusic's "Fave Videos of the 80's," mostly heckling them, because for every good song on there, there was about a half-dozen bad ones, and that's putting it liberally. The fact that Rick Astley wasn't even the most offensive thing on there is a telling sign.

I missed the last installment though, Lauren, Ryan L. and I went out to see Juno. It was quite good, as expected; there'll be a review on Interneta possibly before the end of the year.

There's a lot of stuff to say and hopefully I find the time to put it down. I've been going over it in my head.

Man I'm gonna feel lousy when school lets back in. But that's how it goes.

Meet me where our edges join.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto