So this is Christmas

Ugh. Worst. Christmas. Ever.

Christmas Eve was all right; Karen and Jon came over for a steak dinner, and we played several rounds of Cranium. Two of the players had many, many ounces of extra help from Capt. Morgan. By the end of the evening they were the good kind of drunk, where everything’s a hilarious performance, and we were all laughing so hard I was afraid I would laugh the baby out. It was fun.

But today left a little something to be desired, as far as holiday cheer is concerned. Santa brought Iain an apocalypse-grade hangover, the kind where you wish you would just hurry up and die already so the pain will end. For me, he brought an uncontrollable urge to reorganize the baby’s room at 6 o’clock in the morning.

Christmas dinner was microwaved chicken parm with a side of fudge.

Having received bountiful gifts of cash from our parents, there were only two presents under the tree, one for each of us, from my sister. We opened them around 3 o’clock, as soon as Iain was able to sit up without falling out of bed and concussing himself. He got The Baby Owner’s Manual, a handy little guide with a sense of humor, and I got a gorgeous daisy brooch with little rhinestones in it. If I were skinny again I’d wear it with my chocolate-brown vintage velvet blazer and the jeans I only got to wear twice before my abdomen ballooned. As it is, I’m going to wear it in hopes that its beauty will distract the viewer from my belly, which vacillates between resembling a basketball and a bag full of rabid weasels.

I knew going into this holiday that it was going to be different, because it was just the two of us and our jobs and bank account and girth and temperament prevented us from doing it up old-school-style. Even though I knew all that going in, and even though the rational part of my brain reminds me that Iain and I had already talked this whole thing out, it’s still a little disappointing.

And since I’m 39 and a half weeks pregnant, enormously hormonal and pretty much constantly miserable, just about everything that doesn’t involve first-stage labor is a disappointment.

December 25, 2004 | Filed Under daily grind