Sorry for the lapse, everybody. December was a crazy month. Just as I was settling back into life post-jury duty, I was stricken with what might have been the flu or TB, possibly bronchitis, perhaps the worst cold of my life, maybe even all four. I’m still hacking up pieces of lung every now and then but I’m definitely on the mend.

Christmas came and went mostly without incident. For the first time in my life, I spent Christmas Eve alone and it was lovely. I’m a misanthropic crab most of the time, and I really value my solitude. I imagine that at some point in my life I’ll eventually live with a guy, and perhaps get married… I only hope that by then I’ll have gotten over my only-child, unsharing, neurotic bullshit or find some saintly man willing to put up with it. So I spent Christmas Eve in my own bed and I even got to sleep in. As the oldest grandchild on both sides of my family, this second bit is critical. With each successive cousin was another 6 or 7 years of the “no getting out of bed until you can see the sun” rule. There is a rigid schedule in our Christmas routine: kids wake up at the ass crack of dawn and dance around parents’ beds until cameras are ready and coffee is made. At this point, everyone—still in pajamas —proceeds to the stockings, which serve as appetizers to the main course. The present opening orgy has to wait until we all have breakfast and the out-of-towners arrive, which can take anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours and is the most excruciating wait I’ve ever endured. When I was one of the grade schoolers plotting to catch Santa in the act or, at the very least, be one of the first kids downstairs to see the loot, getting up at the ass-crack of dawn was a blast. I stopped believing in Santa, though, around the time I caught my dad shoving a dollar bill under my pillow after losing my first tooth—that would have been around 1990 or so and I would have been only 6. Ever since then I’ve been the cousin championing the benefits of sleeping in. “It’s Christmas! Don’t you want to sleep in late and enjoy the day off?” Absolutely not. Emily was born in ‘89, so around the time I was giving up on the Santa traditions, she was just getting into them. After Emily came Sarah, and then before too long, Jon, and lastly the twins. Believe me when I say that being able to sleep until 9am on December 25th was truly my own personal Christmas miracle.

The twins had spent the night at Brian’s on Christmas Eve and showed up in their pajamas at Mom’s house around 10:30 Christmas morning. They ripped and teared and Natalie pretended to be surprised about her new bike. Just a week prior, they’d been playing in the backyard and Nick lifted the garage door, exposing Natalie’s new purple two-wheeler and, in her words, “ruining Christmas.” Still, a bike is a bike, and Santa had brought her an EasyBake oven, so all was well with the world. We sat around for a few more hours, eating muffins and installing computer games. I kept clucking around the house, trying to get the twins and Mom dressed and ready to go, but to no avail. My mom is infamous in our family for being exceedingly late, always. To the point that she actually gives herself more time because she knows everyone else will expect her an hour later anyway. It’s infuriating. Eventually, though, I got the clan together and we got to Kris’s before the table was even set. Sarah brought her boyfriend, Chris (which got confusing); Kathy, Ben, and Jay came; Papa came with Steven, a “client” (that’s a story for another post); Alpha was there and made the dinner rolls that the the rest of us crave 363 days out of the year (Thanksgiving, too); and including our car, we had enough to field a rugby team. We ate turkey, we opened presents, we played games, and eventually we all went back to our respective homes and I spent another blessedly quiet night in my own apartment.

Brian had the twins over the weekend, and I’d had to cancel my wisdom teeth appointment because of the TB/bronchitis thing I mentioned earlier, so most of Saturday and Sunday I spent in my pajamas with Coach Taylor and the Dillon Panthers. At one point on Friday or Saturday night, I got a call from Travis to join him and the Matts at Joe’s, and at 11pm or so, I paused an episode of Friday Night Lights and put on real pants for the first time all day.

I’ve realized just now that I prematurely stuck Jason Statham and Jon labels on this post, and they’re only barely peripherally related to the story. Jon was in town for about 5 minutes for winter break from Juilliard (I like to say it with a British accent and elongated vowels, with my eyebrows all raised and my lids fluttering. try it.) and called me one night to come see the Transporter 3 with him. Little did he know, Transporter 3 had been out for at least a week already, and so of course I’d already seen it. I can’t, in good conscience, recommend it, but my God Jason Statham’s arms could cure AIDS. At least. Also, I was deep in the throes of my tuberculosis, so I had to pass. I hope I get to see Jon at least once more before the Juilliard showcase, because after that I’m sure I’ll have to elbow through tweens and paparazzi to spend anytime with the kid.

Back to the story.

Thanks to the lush life of employment in education (it has its moments), I had the whole week after Christmas off, so I offered to watch Nick and Natalie while Mom and Brian worked (suckers). Nick, Natalie, and I had a blast. One of the perks of being so much older than the twins is that I get to regress, play imagination games, be bossy and tell them what to do, and spoil them all at the same time, all the while taking no real responsibility for their discipline. The 17 year age difference is really, really fun.

EDIT: I’ve got lots more to tell, about Joe’s and New Years and vast quantities of meat products that I may or may not have consumed in a drunken state of zero self-control, but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow. It’ll keep. I’m bushed.