Failure of the Day: What the Hell Was I Going to Say about the Potatoes?

I’m still behind. It’s harder than it seems to catch up. I haven’t written anything about xmas and it’s new years already. It’s OK though. I have a plan. I put up my 2004 calendar last night, some 36 hours early and I think the jump ahead and the lag of the last little while will balance each other out.

So then…xmas. It was lovely (even though I know something bad happened with the potatoes and I was going to write about it but now I can’t remember what it was). My mother-in-law gave a shitload of lime green items that truly delighted me. She went to Macy’s and bought literally every lime green accessory they had. Scarves, gloves, handbags, earrings, tights, hairclips, scrunchies, socks, and something called a “thong foot tube,” all in the shade of green that is pretty much taking over my personality. Excellent gifts, one and all. Thanks, Bev. (I write that to express gratitude yes but also because I am supposed to be calling her by her first name—that’s what children-in-law do, I’m told. Chris’s sister’s husband calls them by their first names. It’s accepted and expected. Trouble is, Chris’s mom worked in the library of my elementary school and it just feels SO WRONG. So I am practicing in writing first.)

Chris’s gifts to me as ever outnumbered my gifts to him by a ratio of 1.5:1. I think it worked out to roughly equal if you count the hot dogs and nachos at the football game though. Next year I will remember to make him agree to a predefined number of gifts.

And so after a happy holidays (which is a miracle in and of itself considering how much I despise xmas), 2003 ends very much like it began (which is to say, happy), except 700 miles further south (which is to say, home).