I went to Maryland!
Chrimbo was mostly good. Reacting to what Fetian's been saying about the complications of celebrating/not christmas, I have been calling it various other things that show its roots but aren't actually christmas, and I think I like that. (It's been Chrimbo a bunch the last couple years, but also Crimmus and there was a year where Shannon was exclusively calling it Pissmas which was funny so I did it too)
My dad sucks at getting [me] presents. Like two years in a row of being just bad at it. He got me some gift cards too, which is nice in concept, but like, my list explicitly asked for cards to the local craft store which he ignored in favour of REI and Steam. So Fetian gets more video games from my dad, probably, and eventually I need to go to an REI and do a bunch of buying-stuff. Maybe I should find out if the big one with bike-repair folk are able to do the derusting and metal repair on my cargo bike to make it actually safe to ride, that's a genuinely important thing.
I did basically all the cooking, while everyone else hung out and played games. Family this year: Mum and Da, me and Alys and her fiancee Charlie, adoptive older brother Little Gay Jonny!!!!! (who I met in high school and when mom moved back to MD, they re-met in the Washington Gay Man's Choir[1] and have been hanging out all the time and Jonny!!!!!'s regular parents suck ass and his cool grandma died this past year so COME TO OUR CHRIMBO IT IS) and then for dinner we added mom's bestie Barb and Tom[2]. So I was in charge of kitchen and had good whiteboard spreadsheet for tracking things, and did all the cooking for three hours and honestly it was pretty good until people started thanking me, which was a little fraught, and then partway through dinner everyone did a round of applause and I wanted to either kill everyone or burst into tears forever.
I did neither, but I'm looking forward to therapy on Tuesday since, uh. We should. Talk about that maybe. And figure out what's wrong.
Post Chrimbo, Alys went home before her and I got real snippy with each other, which is good --we don't always time that right, and inevitably we will cycle through "lovely seesters -> horrible hellbeasts -> lovely seesters" if we're in too much proximity for too long. Then Wicked Auntie Robin arrived, which was nice because she could give me some knitting help (both solicited and not) and there were lots of games to play.
I stayed through New Years, including Tuesday arriving the night of the 30th and dragging her home. There were Many Games throughout New Years --lots of Moonshine, a couple rounds of Space Base (I won my first-ever game of it, and felt very good about that!), Agricola and Kingsburg, Pit, Hot Streak, Pounce/Nerts, mom and I played Wicked Cribbage, maybe some other stuff? Felt good!
New Years Party was quite good --when I attended two years ago, I really gave myself permission to not interact with moms-friends-I-don't-actually-like and I have carried that into this year where it serves me well. I spent the bulk of the party hanging with Vicki and Eric and Becky (all high school friends) and Tuesday and Cameron(Tues's sib) and Jake (Cam's fiancee)[3], and it felt good to hang with "the teens", especially since they were all friendly quickly and it's nice when your friends can be cool with each other.
In between it all, mom and I dealt with eleven boxes from The Shed Full Of Her Dead Parents' Stuff, and did one dump run, and a little bit of other house organizing and the like?
That's many things! Tuesday and I rode the train home yesterday and it was perfectly on time (and in fact, slightly early to Boston) and we got seats together right away which was very good.
I didn't quite finish the scarf I'm making for Veronica before leaving, but I'm in the home stretch now, and I have put "mail it to her" on my todo list. If I do enough grading (sigh) in the next few days, then I can reward myself with a trip to make-and-mend now that I'm not on buying-knitting-supplies moratorium (it is a bad look to put things on your wantlist and then immediately buy those things for yourself, although as noted, most of my fambly ignored the part where I was like "yeah, I think I'm really into knitting now" except Alys and Charlie who got me a neat book and big thick yarn that I'm gonna try and make into hats, and Wicked Auntie Robin, who gave me some needle-protectors after I kept stealing hers, and later handed me "here, these are the ones I don't want" of her stitch markers.). I gotta buy a tapestry needle to weave in ends (mom offered me one of hers since I was borrowing them in MD, but I probably will want multiple in the long run) and also I want to look at the yarn and see if they have any really interesting scraps to use for Alys since she loved my chaos-scarf and wants one of her own.
That's a lot of things! WOO!
-Sor
[1] Gay Men's Chorus = "Tenor1, Tenor2, Baritone, Bass" instead of SATB, but they don't care about your gender or sexuality beyond that. Mom has a pin attached to her nametag that reads "Dyke Division" which, like, my mother is maybe the clearest example I've ever personally met of the difference between "queer as sexuality" (they're ambiguously gendered but female-assigned and very much into men) and "queer as culture" (my hairy-legged, overall-wearing, goofy, fun, not-too-serious mother absolutely belongs to the label dyke, yeah.)
[2] Also mom's friend, Barb's husband, dad's DM in the DnD game they play
[3] This makes them, as Cameron and I determined, my "future-future-sibling-in-law-in-law". It's a race to see which of us two couples will get married first! And also Alys and Charlie! If you asked me to put actual money down, I think it would honestly be on the dark horse of "yeah, Shannon and Lexi are going to sign some paperwork and not bother with any kind of party and they'll accidentally tell us like four years later".