Velociworld

I'M FEELING MIGHTY FESTIVE

I have no choice, and it beats the alternative. Actually, I like getting set for the holidays. Number one, I don't have to string lights on the tree. This is because I REFUSE to string lights on the tree. No tree, even the most expensive silk one, is symmetrical, and I find it annoying. I can work well with my hands, and I have an artistic flair, but stringing lights is an outside the lines endeavor I take no pleasure in whatsoever. I'll hang all the ornaments you want, but I don't do lights.

So The Bride is stringing while I set about my particular task, which is setting up my Christmas village. I really have a Queer Eye streak to me, deep down. I set it up on my grandmother's marble top buffet, and I have a grand house, a church, some villagers, stone fencing (and a My Little Pony! and a wand! and, and some Hello Kitty underwear! and...) and never mind. Indulge me.

Because I will take pleasure in the holidays if it kills me. We'll enjoy Thanksgiving as a nuclear family. My one brother was invited, but bagged out at the last minute. My other brother is spending it with his fiancee. We usually go to Columbus, Georgia, and spend Thanksgiving with my sister, but she's pissed at me for numerous grievances, some imagined, most real, I suspect. Too bad. I liked going to Warm Springs to shop in the Christmas shops for my daughters, and having lunch in Pine Mountain, my father's birthplace, and seeing that fabulous parade of lights at Callaway Gardens whilst sipping a hip flask of brandy. Oh, well. Fuck it. That ain't happening. I may call my other sister in California tomorrow, since I haven't spoken to her in a year. I assume she's still around. Christmas will be more of the same.

I don't mind, really. Spending the holidays with your wife and kids beats hell out of spending it with your extended in-laws. THAT can drive a man to drink.

One final word: The Bride has a theme for the tree that precludes all but the most carefully vetted ornaments. All the old kiddie stuff they made goes on the ancillary tree, yada yada. But. But! I WILL have my Three Stooges ornaments on the tree this year. They are wearing tuxedos, dammit. And that's as high-faluting as you can get with ornaments.